Bobsleigh

Bobsledders Jenny Ciochetti, of Edmonton, and Helen Upperton, of Calgary, have been teammates for almost four years.

Together, they have travelled all over Europe and North America, they have sipped beer in Koegnissee, Germany, and they have ripped through slippery bobsleigh slopes in St. Moritz, Switzerland.

Throughout the years, they have become extremely close.

"She's actually like an older sister for me," Ciochetti said of Upperton in an interview with CTVOlympics.ca. "She helps take care of me and she's always looking out for everyone else."

On many teams, friendship with a teammate wouldn't be so remarkable - or so difficult.

But on a women's bobsledding team, close relationships don't always come easily.

"(It's) very complicated," said Upperton, a bobsleigh pilot, of her relationship with brakemen like Ciochetti. "And it's very hard to build exceptional relationships because of the circumstances that we have to put ourselves through every few years."

While Upperton has known for months that she will pilot of one of two Canadian sleds at the 2010 Olympic Winter Games in Whistler, Ciochetti has never had any such certainty about her own Olympic fate.

Just three weeks ahead of the Olympic Opening Ceremony, Ciochetti remains one of three bobsleigh brakemen in the running for a position in one of the two sleds. 

Heather Moyse, of Summerside, P.E.I., and Shelley-Ann Brown, of Pickering, Ont., are the other two brakemen who raced with Canada-2 pilot Upperton and Canada-1 pilot Kaillie Humphries throughout the World Cup season that concluded only last weekend.

It's not a comfortable situation, but it's one that remains the same every Olympic year as bobsleigh teams have to pare down their larger World Cup rosters for the Games.

"It's really important for pilots to have more than one brakeman because it's a very intense, high risk sport and the chance of overuse injuries is really high," Upperton explained.

During the World Cup season, a race is scheduled somewhere in Europe or North America almost every weekend. Each race and training run, brakemen are in charge of getting a 170-kilogram (375 lbs) sled moving down the track. They are also responsible for maintaining the sleds between races.

Moyse finished fourth with Upperton at the Turin Olympics in 2006. She says most people don't realize how much work she does with the sleds.

"We carry our sleds, we lift our sleds, we pack our sleds, we flip our sleds, we put the runners on, we polish the runners ... we do all of these things that people don't really (realize)," she said. "They're like, 'what?' you don't have people to do that for you?' No. We do that."

Which is why she appreciates having someone around to help.

"With and the amount of equipment work there is and how heavy the equipment is, you have to have more than one person," Upperton said.

"And the hard part about women's bobsleigh is we don't have four-man (events). We just have two-man. So you have two brakemen and every February at the end of the year at the World Championships or the Olympic Games, one girl is in the sled racing and the other one is sitting on the sidelines, watching. And because of that circumstance, I feel like it's easier for me to treat the sport like a job," she said.

Moyse agrees that the relationship between pilot and brakemen can be challenging.

"How do I explain this? It's a difficult dynamic," Moyse said.

"The pilot's not the coach. They don't tell you how to do your pushing... But they are the ones that kind of influence or make the decisions on who pushes them. So they can choose, kind of, what's going on. And with the brakemen knowing that, it has the potential to make things kind of awkward."

Awkward or not, when it comes to racing together, brakemen respect and trust their pilots. It's a necessity in this sport. Once she is done pushing, a brakeman is done her job until the end of the race (when she pulls the brakes).

For the rest of the curves and turns down the track, she's just along for the ride.

The curvy, twisty, 120-kilometre-an-hour ride.

Terrified after her own first run down the track, Ciochetti says without her own competitive spirit and her trust in her pilot, it would have been extremely difficult to get back into a bobsled.

"The trust maybe just develops where you just have it because you're like, 'well, you're going to drive it better than me anyway, so I'll get in with you,'" Ciochetti said, laughing.

Today, the trust that kept Ciochetti in the sport has bloomed into a full-fledged friendship.

Upperton, for example, is the first to boast of her teammate's skill with a paintbrush.

"She's really, really talented," she said.

Repeating the story to Ciochetti, however, just resulted in embarassed giggles.

"You know how friends talk about other friends?" That's just a friend saying that," Ciochetti said, laughing. "I don't know, I took art in school. I like it, but I wouldn't call myself fantastic at all."

Ciochetti and Upperton have built a friendship in a difficult place, and they believe it's one that will last.

"I can't speak for everyone but for Helen and I, I am happy with where we're at. I feel like she's one of my really good friends now," Ciochetti said.

Upperton agreed.

"People's hearts get broken, you know? Every four years. But it doesn't change the fact that I think I'll have lifelong friends when I retire from this sport," she said.