Bobsleigh

Calgary -- It's not quite Canada's Olympic team, but it's close.

Bobsleigh Canada Skeleton named 32 gutsy sliders Wednesday to its national squads and, although the athletes still have to go through a complex qualification system, the group has an impressive track record that bodes well for the 2010 Winter Games in Vancouver.

Four members boast Olympic medals, seven hold world championship medals and 14 have stood on a World Cup podium.

"I guarantee you that there are going to be more of those [accomplishments] to come," said skeleton racer Jon Montgomery, who is among Canada's best hopes for Olympic hardware in February.

The 30-year-old from Russell, Man., won the 2009 Canadian championship last weekend and last season's World Cup race at the Whistler Sliding Centre, home to the 2010 events.

Joining him on the men's skeleton team are 38-year-old Jeff Pain of Calgary, who won a silver medal at the 2006 Games in Turin, and Toronto's Mike Douglas, 38, who made his way onto the national World Cup team after performing well in a series of selection races.

The women's World Cup skeleton squad includes multiple-time Canadian champion Mellisa Hollingsworth, a 29-year-old from Eckville, Alta., who won a bronze medal in 2006, as well as Amy Gough, 32, of Abbotsford, B.C., and 22-year-old Sarah Reid of Calgary.

The World Cup bobsleigh team is led by Pierre Lueders of Edmonton, who is gunning to race in his fifth Olympics. The 39-year-old of pilot of the Canada 1 sled, who scored gold in the two-man event in Nagano in 1998 and silver in the two-man in 2006, will be pushed by a combination of David Bissett, Neville Wright, Justin Kripps and Ken Kotyk.

The Canada 2 sled will be driven by Lyndon Rush of Humboldt, Sask., and pushed by brakeman Lascelles Brown, who shared Olympic silver with Lueders in 2006. Also backing Rush will be Chris Le Bihan and Bret Bresciani. Brakeman Dan Humphries, who competed for Britain in the two-man race at the 2006 Games and received Canadian citizenship last Tuesday, will also have Rush's back.

Humphries's wife, Kaillie Humphries, is an up-and-coming pilot who landed on the World Cup podium twice last year, and also was named to Canada's women's bobsleigh team.

Pilot Amanda Stepenko will also represent Canada on the World Cup circuit. Decorated pilot Helen Upperton, who won Canada's first World Cup gold medal in women's bobsled, placed fourth at the Turin Games and turns 30 on Halloween, was named as driver of the Canada 1 sled. All three live and train in Calgary.

Backing them up will be Shelley-Ann Brown, Jenny Ciochetti, Heather Moyse, Amanda Moreley, Heather Patterson, Veronique Fortin and Sabrina Notarangelo.

The skeleton team also named six sliders to the Intercontinental Cup team: John Fairbairn, Keith Loach, Charles Wlodarczak and Carla Pavan, Darla Deschamps and Michelle Bartleman.

"While the 2010 Olympic team will not be named until January, I would like to say that this is an incredible team that combines veteran leadership with youthful energy and drive," Bobsleigh Canada Skeleton president Reid Morrison said yesterday.

Fittingly, the teams were named at Calgary's Old City Hall, across from Olympic Plaza where medals were presented to athletes during the 1988 Winter Games. Officials, as well as athletes, many of whom were raised here or moved to Calgary to train, credited those Games and the sliding track left behind at Canada Olympic Park for helping future Olympians.

"This depth is in large part thanks to the legacy of the 1988 Olympic Winter Games here in Calgary and continues to serve as a medal generating factory for Canada's winter-sport athletes," Morrison said.

Montgomery said while his Olympic dream gained speed in Calgary on the remnants of the 1988 Games, his sliding career began on his local prairie toboggan hill.

"We went hell bent for leather down that slope and brought our great ambition here to Calgary to try our hand at the big deal at COP and now, with the legacy of the 2010 Games other Canadians will have a chance to experience that and try their hand at these sports in Whistler as well," he said.

"It will do great things for our sport beyond 2010."