Bobsledding is one of the most thrilling events in the Winter Olympics, blending speed, precision, and courage as athletes hurtle down icy tracks at breakneck speeds. But its history is just as compelling as the sport itself. 

While Switzerland has long been credited as the birthplace of bobsled dating to the late 1800s, historical evidence found shortly ahead of the 1998 Nagano Olympics revealed that lumber sled races were taking place in Albany, New York, as early as the 1880s - possibly several years before the sport was enjoyed in Switzerland. That American legacy, long buried, adds a new layer to bobsled's international roots. 

The first recorded bobsled competition was held in Switzerland, in 1898, in St. Moritz, and the sport's governing body, the Federation Internationale de Bobsleigh et Tobagganing (FIBT), was founded in 1923. In June 2015, the FIBT changed its name to IBSF (International Bobsleigh and Skeleton Federation).

Bobsled made its Olympic debut at the inaugural Winter Games in Chamonix, France, in 1924 with a four-man event. Switzerland’s Eduard Scherrer led his team to victory, claiming the first-ever Olympic bobsled gold. The two-man event was added in 1932 at the Lake Placid Games. Since then, the sport has featured in every Winter Olympics except the 1960 Squaw Valley Games, where no track was constructed.

From the rudimentary wooden sleds of the 1920s to today’s high-tech carbon fiber rocket-shaped apparatus, bobsled has transformed dramatically. Rules were adjusted to cap sled weight, runners were regulated for temperature, and women's events were finally introduced at the 2002 Salt Lake City Games. Technology, athlete training, and track design have all elevated the sport into one of the Olympics’ most demanding and competitive events.

Italian legend Eugenio Monti is perhaps the most iconic figure in the sport. A six-time Olympic medalist, Monti is as famous for his sportsmanship as for his skill - famously lending a bolt to a rival team at the 1964 Innsbruck Games, which cost him gold but won him global admiration. Germany’s Andre Lange and his brakeman Kevin Kuske are the winningest duo, with Lange taking four Olympic golds and one silver. German Bobsledder Bogdan Musiol has the most overall Olympic medals - a total of seven - with one gold, five silver and one bronze. In the women's events, Canadian American bobsledder Kaillie Humphries and Germany’s Sandra Kiriasis have become household names with multiple Olympic medals each.

Of the many incredible moments the sport has enjoyed, fans will most likely point to the debut of the Jamaican bobsled team at the 1988 Winter Olympics as one of the most iconic. Despite never having experienced snow or ice, four sprinters defied expectations and competed in Calgary. Their feat was later immortalized in the Jon Turteltaub movie, "Cool Runnings."

Looking further back, Billy Fiske’s back-to-back golds in 1928 and 1932 (including with teammates who had never seen a bobsled before), also had a lasting impact on the sport's history. There's also Eddie Eagan’s remarkable feat of becoming the only athlete to win gold in both Summer and Winter Olympics (boxing in 1920 and bobsled in 1932). And U.S. fans will fondly remember Steven Holcomb’s gold in 2010, ending a 62-year U.S. drought in the four-man event.

But perhaps some of the most memorable moments in the sport of bobsled occurred off the track, when both the Canadian and British teams had malfunctions with their equipment during the 1964 Innsbruck Olympics. Eugenio Monti, in two acts of pure sportsmanship, first had his mechanics help the Canadian four-man team fix a damaged axle (they would later take gold) and then lent British bobsledders Tony Nash and Robin Dixon a bolt from his own sled when he saw theirs was broken (they would go on to win the title). Monti was awarded the International Fair Play Award for his magnanimous behavior. 

In the early years of the sport's history, Switzerland and the United States led the way. But since the Cold War era, Germany (including East and West Germany) has emerged as the preeminent force. Between them, Swiss and German athletes have won more than half of all Olympic bobsled medals awarded. Canada, Italy, and more recently the U.S. have remained strong contenders, especially since the resurgence of American bobsled in the 2000s.

Germany leads the medal table in Olympic bobsledding with an impressive 32 medals, including 16 gold medals. Switzerland isn't far behind, having earned 31 medals - 10 of them gold - across its Olympic bobsled history. The United States ranks third, with a total 28 medals in the sport. Together these three nations have dominated the Olympic podium in bobsled, reflecting their long-standing excellence in the sport. 

Tom Doe remains the youngest Olympic bobsled medalist, earning silver for the United States in 1928 at just 15 years old. On the other end of the spectrum, Belgium's Max Houben holds the record as the oldest person to win an Olympic bobsled medal, claiming silver at the 1948 Winter Olympics in St. Moritz at the age of fifty. 

East Germany’s Bogdan Musiol holds the record for the most Olympic bobsled medals won by a man. Competing from 1980 to 1992, Musiol earned seven medals—one gold, five silver, and one bronze—while pushing for three different drivers. Among pilots, both Eugenio Monti and Wolfgang Hoppe have six Olympic medals each.

The United States' Elana Meyers Taylor is the most decorated woman Olympic bobsled athlete, with five medals (three silver, two bronze) earned between 2010 and 2022.

Kaillie Humphries follows closely, with four Olympic medals, including two gold and one bronze for Canada (2010, 2014, 2018) and a gold representing the United States in monobob in Beijing in 2022. 

The longstanding rivalry between Germany and Switzerland defined Olympic bobsled for decades. The Cold War era also ignited fierce competition between East Germany, West Germany, and the U.S., particularly during the 1980s. In recent years, Canada and the U.S. have fueled a new North American rivalry in the women’s events, especially between stars like Kaillie Humphries and Elana Meyers Taylor.

2022 Beijing: Germany once again dominated the ice, winning gold in three of four bobsled events. Francesco Friedrich repeated his historic double win from PyeongChang, defending his two-man and four-man titles, while Laura Nolte, making her Olympic debut, captured gold in the two-woman event with brakewoman Deborah Levi. Compatriots, Mariama Jamanka added a silver in the two-woman event with Alexandra Burghardt. American Kaillie Humphries, claimed gold for the U.S. in the Olympic debut of monobob, and Elana Meyers Taylor earned silver in monobob and bronze in two-woman, becoming the most decorated woman Olympic bobsledder in history. 

2018 PyeongChang: Germany dominated the competition in PyeongChang, winning four of the nine medals up for grabs. That included all three golds (tied with Canada in the two-man event), and a tie for silver with South Korea in the four-man event. Elana Meyers Taylor and Lauren Gibbs won the United States' sole bobsled medal, taking silver in the two-woman event -- Meyers Taylor's third Olympic medal. 

2014 Sochi: American Steven Holcomb ended another 62-year drought for the U.S. when he won bronze in the two-man event. Russia's Aleksandr Zubkov became the sixth pilot to win a gold medal in two-man and four-man at the same Olympic Winter Games and the first athlete to sweep bobsled medals in his home country, but those medals were later stripped due to a doping violation. The German men missed the four-man podium for the first time since 1968 and failed to win a bobsled medal in any event for the first time since 1964. Canada's Kaillie Humphries became the first woman to successfully defend her Olympic title.

2010 Vancouver: Steven Holcomb ended a 62-year gold medal drought for the U.S. when he won the four-man event. Germany’s Andre Lange and Kevin Kuske took their second straight gold in the two-man bobsled, finishing .22 seconds ahead of compatriots Thomas Florschuetz and Richard Adjei. Russia’s Aleksandr Zubkov* and Aleksei Voyevoda finished third, winning the country’s first medal in the two-man event.

2006 Torino: In the second Olympics where three events were contested, Germany became the first nation to sweep all three golds. German driver Andre Lange led the charge by sweeping the two-man and four-man golds, becoming the fifth person to accomplish that feat. He also became the third athlete (second driver) to win three bobsled gold medals and the third driver to defend his four-man title. Swiss driver Martin Annen won his second and third career Olympic medals, capturing bronze in both the two-man and four-man (he also won bronze in the two-man in Salt Lake). Americans Shauna Rohbock and Valerie Fleming won silver in the women’s event and Germany’s Sandra Kiriasis won gold, becoming the first woman to win multiple bobsled medals (she won silver in Salt Lake).

2002 Salt Lake: Women’s bobsled made its Olympic debut and the American team of Jill Bakken and Vonetta Flowers ended a 54-year gold-medal drought for U.S. sleds at the Games. Germany claimed both men’s gold medals, and in four-man, Americans Todd Hays (silver) and Brian Shimer (bronze) won the first U.S. men’s medals since 1956.

1998 Nagano: For the first time in Olympic history, there was a tie for the gold medal in bobsled. After four runs, Canada’s Pierre Lueders and Italy’s Guenther Huber recorded exactly the same time: 3:37.24. Germany’s Christoph Langen won bronze. Langen improved to gold in the rain-shortened three-run four-man race. The German sled won in 2:39.41, six-tenths of a second faster than the silver medalists from Switzerland. Great Britain and France tied for bronze.

1994 Lillehammer: The two-man competition saw a merging of old and new for the Swiss team. Driver Gustaf Weder and brakeman Donat Acklin edged the other Swiss sled of driver Reto Goetschi and brakeman Guido Acklin. It was the second consecutive two-man gold for Weder, who was one of the top drivers in the world from the late 1980s to mid-1990s, winning six world titles to go along with his four Olympic medals. But Weder edged Goetschi and Guido Acklin, who was the younger brother of Donat Acklin, by just .05 seconds. Goetschi would be one of the world’s top drivers for the rest of the decade and remains one of the medal favorites for the Salt Lake Games. 

The four-man competition saw the last Olympic hurrah for two German superstars, Harold Czudaj and Wolfgang Hoppe. Czudaj’s sled won the gold medal, edging Weder’s sled by .06 seconds and Hoppe won bronze for his sixth and final medal. Though Czudaj competed at the 1998 Games, he never won another medal at the Olympics or the world championships.

The American streak of futility reached 38 years, but this time the U.S. failed in bizarre fashion. The best finish for a U.S. sled was 13th by the team of driver Brian Shimer and brakeman Randy Jones. But it was Shimer’s disqualification from the four-man for using heated runners – they were .9 degrees Celsius too warm — that captured the most attention. No sled had ever been disqualified from the Olympics for such an offense.

1992 Albertville: In the closest four-man competition in Olympic history at the time, the Austrian sled driven by Ingo Appelt edged the German sled driven by Wolfgang Hoppe to win the gold medal by .02 seconds. It is Austria’s only Olympic gold medal in bobsled. In the two-man competition, Gustav Weder and Donat Acklin, won their first of two consecutive gold medals. The two-man event was also the coming out party for German superstar Christoph Langen, who won the bronze medal. 

1988 Calgary: The hot topics in Calgary included sand and Jamaica – not exactly the normal buzzwords associated with bobsled. The two-man competition was marred by poor weather conditions and poor track condition. Defending champion Wolfgang Hoppe had the fastest time on the first run, but only the eighth-best time on the second run to fall behind the Soviet sled driven by Janis Kipurs. Hoppe complained bitterly about the track, which had become covered with sand, dirt and dust because of high winds and warm temperatures. He compared sliding down the track to “running on sandpaper.” After the first run, six nations, including the first-place Soviet Union, filed protest asking for the results from the first two runs disallowed. The protests were denied, but the weather and track conditions got so bad the next day that the third run was canceled, even after 28 sleds had already raced. When the competition resumed a day later, Hoppe had the fastest time in both of the last two runs, but the deficit was too much to overcome and Kipurs earned the Soviet Union’s first and only bobsled gold medal. Kipurs, a 30-year-old native of Latvia, painted his sled Latvian colors in protest of the Soviet occupation of his country. (Latvia competed as an independent nation for the first time since World War II at the 1992 Albertville Games.) Kipurs won a bronze medal in the four-man event, which was won by Swiss driver Ekkehard Fasser. Kipurs’ success in bobsled continued after his career was over. He was formerly the head coach of the U.S. national team. In the four-man event, American Brent Rushlaw missed a medal by two-hundredths of a second, finishing in fourth place.

The most significant development of the competition may have been the large number of warm-weather nations that entered sleds in the Olympics. The most famous and memorable was the Jamaican bobsled team, which helped finance its training by selling shirts and reggae record. The team would later have its story told in the movie “Cool Runnings.” Other warm weather nations that competed were Mexico, the U.S. Virgin Islands and the Netherlands Antilles. Those nations staged their own competition, vying for the “Caribbean Cup.” That cup was eventually won not by a Caribbean nation, but by New Zealand, whose two-man team of Alexander Peterson and Peter Henry finished 20th out of 41 teams.

This was the last Games in which there was no seeding system in the bobsled competition.

1984 Sarajevo: East Germany’s Wolfgang Hoppe became the fourth and most recent driver to sweep the bobsled events at a single Olympics. The medals were the first of Hoppe’s six. This Olympics was also significant because of the emergence of the Soviet Union in bobsled. The pair of driver Zintis Ekmanis and brakeman Vladimir Aleksandrov earned the bronze in the two-man; it was the Soviet Union’s first bobsled medal.

1980 Lake Placid: Meinhard Nehmer became the only driver to win three Olympic gold medals when he won the four-man race by a dominating .95 seconds. Swiss driver Erich Schaerer also had a strong Olympics, taking the silver in the four-man and the gold in the two-man. It was the only Olympic gold medal for Schaerer, who won six world titles in his career.

1976 Innsbruck: East Germany emerged as a bobsled power as Meninhard Nehmer became the third driver in history to win both events. These Olympics are also the first time Swiss and German athletes won all six medals. They would repeat that feat four years later in Lake Placid.

1972 Sapporo Games: West German sleds won half of the six medals, including the gold and the silver in the two-man competition.

1968 Grenoble: Italian bobsled legend Eugenio Monti capped a brilliant career by winning both the four-man and the two-man titles. Monti entered the Games with four Olympic medals and nine world titles, but an Olympic gold still eluded him. Neither of Monti’s victories came easily as the Grenoble competition was one of the most bizarre in history. In the two-man competition, Monti, who was 40 at the time, and his brakeman Luciano De Paolis trailed by .1 seconds after the first three runs. But with a blistering time of 1 minute, 10.05 seconds – a track record – Monti caught the West German team of Horst Floth and Pepi Bader, and the two teams finished with the same four-run time 4:41.54. Initially, it was announced that both sleds would be awarded gold medals. Later, judges invoked world bobsled rules and Monti and De Paolis were awarded the gold medal because they had the fastest single heat time. (Those rules have since been changed and now gold medals would be awarded to both sleds.) The four-man competition did not end in a tie, but was still tight, as Monti’s team defeated the Austrian sled driven by Erwin Thaler by .09 seconds. The competition was shortened to two runs because warm weather was causing the track to thaw. Monti’s final Olympic medal came 12 years after his first.

1964 Innsbruck: Both events, which were held on the track in Igls, Austria, had surprise winners. In the two-man, the British team of driver Tony Nash and brakeman Robin Dixon won the nation’s first bobsled medal. There was, and is, no bobsled track in the country. The Canadian sled driven by Victor Emery won the four-man gold medal. Canada had never before entered a bobsled in Olympic competition. Italy’s Eugenio Monti won bronze medals in both two-man and four-man. Monti is perhaps better remembered for his act of sportsmanship in the two-man competition of 1964. Nash finished his first run in second place (behind Monti) but noticed that his sled had suffered a broken axle bolt. The problem might have forced Nash to pull out of the competition. When Monti heard about this, he removed a bolt from the rear axle of his own sled and gave it to Nash. Nash went on to win the gold medal, and Monti took bronze.

1960 Squaw Valley: No bobsled events were held.

1956 Cortina d’Ampezzo: Italian sleds finished one-two in the two-man. The driver of the winning sled, Lamberto Dalla Costa was a 35-year-old jet pilot who had never raced anywhere but Cortina. Italian driver Eugenio Monti, who lived in Cortina, won silver medals in both events, the first two of his record six Olympic medals for a driver. The most accomplished driver ever, Monti also owns a record nine world titles. The U.S. sled driven by Arthur Tyler won the bronze medal in the four-man. It was the last time a U.S. sled won a medal.

1952 Oslo: West Germany driver Andreas Ostler won both events, the first sweep of the Olympic bobsled events by a driver in history. Only four other drivers have accomplished the double. The medals were also significant because they were the first Olympic golds won by a German sled, announcing the dawn of a bobsled dynasty that continues to this day. Ostler’s crew in the four-man weighed an almost inconceivable 1041 1/2 pounds – an average of over 260 pounds per man. Prior to the Olympics, the sport's governing body limited the weight of future crews to 880 pounds. Swiss legend Fritz Feierabend drove to the bronze medals in both events. It was the third consecutive Olympics Feierabend had won a medal in the two-man. Feierabend won four Olympic medals and five world titles, but never an Olympic gold. American Stanley Benham won silver behind Ostler in both events.

1948 St. Moritz: The United States regained the four-man title as the sled driven by Francis Tyler won the gold medal in a competition that was halted in the middle of the second run when a water pipe broke, flooding the track. Racing on their home track, Swiss sleds took the top two spots in the two-man, with Felix Endrich driving to the gold medal. Five years later, less than a week after he won the two-man world title in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Endrich was killed when his sled hurtled over a wall at “dead man’s curve” on the Garmisch course and struck a tree. Enrich was 31 at the time.

1936 Garmisch-Partenkirchen: Switzerland swept the top two spots in the four-man competition, becoming the first nation other than the United States to win two medals in one bobsled event, or for that matter, two bobsled medals at one Olympics. The driver of the winning sled Pierre Musy was a 25-year-old Army Lieutenant and the son of the former President of Switzerland. The U.S. won two medals in two-man with the pair of Ivan Brown and Alan Washbond winning the gold and Gilbert Colgate and Richard Lawrence taking the bronze. Brown was the only driver to compete without goggles, claiming they dulled his eyesight and added wind resistance.

1932 Lake Placid: The two-man competition was contested for the first time, with the team of driver J. Hubert Stevens and brakeman Curtis Stevens winning the gold. Three were residents of Lake Placid and used blowtorches to heat their runners for 25 minutes prior to racing. That tactic is now illegal, as runners must be within a certain temperature range, but while it was unusual it was considered acceptable at the time. In the four-man event, Billy Fiske repeated as champion, this time backed by a team that included Olympic legend Eddie Eagan. Eagan is the only athlete to win a gold medal in different sports at both the Summer and Winter Games. In addition to this gold medal, he also won a gold medal as a light heavyweight boxer at the 1920 Antwerp Olympics.

Fiske and his teammates – Eagan, Clifford Gray and Jay O’Brien – never raced together again. In fact, Fiske, Gray and O’Brien all died within a one-year period starting in 1940. O’Brien died of a heart attack at 57. Fiske joined the British Royal Air Force in 1939 – he was the first American to do so. Fighting in the Battle of Britain over southern England, he was wounded while flying a Hurricane fighter. He was only 29 when he died on August 17, 1940. Gray, known as Tippy, died in 1941. He was a songwriter whose 3000 songs included “Got a Date with an Angel” and “If You Were the Only Girl in the World.” Eagan died on June 14, 1967.

1928 St. Moritz: For the only time in Olympic history, the four-man competition was actually a five-man competition. In a competition shortened to two runs because of heavy thawing, William “Billy” Fiske drove the USA II sled to victory, earning his first of two consecutive gold medals in the event. Sixteen years old at the time, Fiske is still the youngest bobsledder to win a gold medal. The other four members of Fiske’s team – Nion Tucker, Geoffrey Mason, Clifford Gray and Richard Parke – were selected after they answered an ad in the Paris edition of the New York Herald Tribune. None of them had ever seen a bobsled before. Mason showed up for practice just 18 days before winning the gold medal and never competed in an international bobsled race again. 

The USA II sled driven by Jennison Heaton finished .5 seconds back in second place, marking the first time in Olympic history that sleds from the same country had finished 1-2. 

1924 Chamonix: The first Olympic Winter Games, only the four-man competition was held.