Steven Holcomb

Steven Holcomb
nation	United States
birthday	April 14, 1980
place of birth	Park City ,  United States
size	178 cm
Weight	91 kg
date of death	May 6, 2017
Place of death	Lake Placid ,  United States
Career
position	pilot
Trainer	Brian Shimer
National squad	since 1998
Medal table
Olympic medals 1 × 2 × 0 × World Cup medals 4 × 0 × 5 ×
winter Olympics gold 2010 Vancouver four silver 2014 Sochi two silver 2014 Sochi four  Bobsleigh and Skeleton World Championships bronze 2008 Altenberg team bronze 2009 Lake Placid two gold 2009 Lake Placid four bronze 2009 Lake Placid team bronze 2011 Königssee four gold 2012 Lake Placid two gold 2012 Lake Placid four gold 2012 Lake Placid team bronze 2013 St. Moritz four
Placements in the Bobsleigh World Cup
Overall World Cup two 1. 2006/07 , 2013/14  Overall World Cup foursome 1. 2009/10  Overall World Cup combination 1. 2009/10 , 2013/14
Podium placements 1. 2. 3.  Two-man bobsleigh 8th 8th 6th  Four-man bobsleigh 12 12 3

Steven Holcomb (* 14. April 1980 in Park City , Utah ; † 6. May 2017 in Lake Placid , New York ) was an American bob pilot .

Career

Beginnings

Holcomb was active as an alpine ski racer in his youth for eight years . In 1998 he switched to bobsleigh and has been a member of the US national team ever since. This year he contested his first World Cup race in Brian Shimer's bobsleigh in Calgary . The best place in his hometown of Park City was a sixth place with James Herberich. In the winter of 1999/2000 he was accepted into the Utah National Guard 's Army World Class Athlete Program , the US Army's sports promotion program. He was the pusher for the pilot Todd Hays and won the four-man push world championship and the USA four-man championship in Monte-Carlo that summer . At the 2000 World Championships in Altenberg he was 13th. In the World Cup , he came in tenth place with Hays. In the 2000/01 season he worked as a pusher and with Mike Dionne at two World Cups. In Lake Placid they drove to sixth place. A year later he started as a pilot for the first time. At the 2002 Olympic Games in Salt Lake City , he was used as an ancestor.

Steven Holcomb with Ivan Radcliff, Brock Kreitzburg and Curt Tomasevicz during the 2005 US elimination races in the four-man bobsleigh on the Calgary track.

2003 to 2007

In the 2002/03 season he won six out of eight races at the Bob America's Cup and came second twice. His first notable success was tenth place in the four-man bobsleigh at the 2003 World Bobsleigh Championship in Lake Placid. At the Junior World Championships at Königssee he was seventh in two and sixth in four. A season later he was in the overall World Cup in two and in the combined ranking 15th, in the four-man 14th. At the 2004 World Championships at Königssee he was twelfth in two and four in each. In the 2004/05 season he achieved several places in the top ten. In the overall world cup of the four-man bobsleigh, he was seventh, in two-man 18th and in the combination eleventh. He finished the 2005 World Championships in Calgary in a four-man eighth and two-man eighteenth. The 2005/06 season he played in a two-man with the three different brakes Brock Kreitzburg , Curtis Tomasevicz and Bill Schuffenhauer . In two-man he was surprisingly fifth at the World Cup race in Cortina d'Ampezzo with Kreitzburg and at the end 13th in the overall standings, sixth in the four-man bobsleigh at the home World Cup in Lake Placid and ninth in the overall standings. The highlight of the season was the Olympic Winter Games in Turin . Here he started in both bobsleigh classes and finished sixth in the four-man and 14th in the two-man bobsleigh.

Holcomb's final breakthrough came in the 2006/07 post-Olympic season . First he won his first world cup race in the four-man bobsleigh in Cortina d'Ampezzo and then the two races in Igls and Cesana . In the overall World Cup he reached second place behind Yevgeny Popov . He also won his first World Cup race this season in the two-man bobsleigh in Cortina and a second in Cesana. Due to the higher number of victories, he was also the winner of the overall World Cup ranking ahead of the Canadian Pierre Lueders with the same number of points . At the 2007 World Championships in St. Moritz , he was fourth and missed a medal with both bobsleds.

After Holcomb's eyesight was severely restricted by the eye disease keratoconus , it was restored with an operation in 2007. In his autobiography, Holcomb wrote that he attempted suicide in 2007 because of depression.

2008 to 2011

In the first World Cup race of the 2007/08 season in Calgary, he defeated the German André Lange in two and also won the four. In the overall standings, he was fourth and third in the combination in two and four. At the 2008 World Championships in Altenberg he was tenth in the two, sixth in the four and third in the USA team. In the 2008/09 season he won two World Cup races in a foursome. In the end he finished fourth in the overall standings in four and ninth in the combination. At the 2009 World Championships in Lake Placid , the US pilot won the gold medal in the four-man bobsleigh.

The score in the World Cup of the season 2009/10 he won won Holcomb, three of the eight races of the season. At the 2010 Olympic Games in Vancouver , Holcomb was Olympic champion in the four-man bobsleigh and achieved his greatest international success. It was the first US Olympic victory in bobsleigh since 1948. In the two-man bobsleigh, he finished sixth. In the 2010/11 season he won two World Cup races in Whistler and Lake Placid with his team of four .

2012 to 2017

In the 2011/12 season he managed neither in two nor in four, only a second place in the four and a second and a third place in the two. In the two-man he was ninth, in the four and seventh in the combination. At the 2012 World Cup in Lake Placid , however, he won a total of three world titles. He became world champion in the two-man bobsleigh for the first time with pusher Steven Langton , with Justin Olsen , Steven Langton and Curtis Tomasevicz in the four-man bobsleigh and was also victorious with the US team. At the 2013 World Championships in St. Moritz he won the bronze medal in the four-man bobsleigh and finished fourth in the two-man bobsleigh. The 2013-14 World Cup season was Holcomb's most successful; overall he won nine races and won the overall standings in two and in combination. At the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi , he won the bronze medal with both bobsleds. In March 2019 he was posthumously awarded the silver medal due to doping of the original winning team around Alexander Subkow . In the following two years he could not build on these successes. In the winter of 2016/17 he won the two-man bobsleigh race in Lake Placid and achieved podium positions four times, placing him second and third in the overall rankings.

On May 6, 2017, Steven Holcomb was found dead in his room at the training camp in Lake Placid, aged 37. According to an initial autopsy report, Holcomb died of a pneumonia and water in his lungs.

Awards

• USOC Athlete of the Year (USA): 2009, 2010

Publications

• with Steve Eubanks: But Now I See - My Journey from Blindness to Olympic Gold . Biography, 2012.

Web links

Commons : Steven Holcomb  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Steven Holcomb in the database of the International Bobsleigh & Skeleton Federation
• Steven Holcomb in the Sports-Reference database (English; archived from the original )
• Team Holcomb website (English)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d e f} Steven Holcomb in the Munzinger archive , accessed on May 7, 2017 ( beginning of article freely accessible)
2. ↑ Jens Hungermann: Holcomb - at first almost blind, now Olympic favorite. In: The world . WeltN24 GmbH, January 7, 2010, accessed on May 7, 2017 . 
3. ↑ At 37 years old: Olympic bobsleigh champion Holcomb found dead. In: Spiegel Online . Retrieved August 11, 2017 . 
4. ↑ Holcomb receives two Olympic silver posthumously. ORF , March 28, 2019, accessed on March 28, 2019 . 
5. ↑ Jens Bierschwale: The mysterious death of the 37-year-old Olympic champion. In: Welt.de. May 7, 2017. Retrieved May 8, 2017 . 
6. ↑ Olympic Family Mourns The Loss Of Olympic Champion Bobsledder Steven Holcomb. In: teamusa.org. United States Olympic Committee, May 6, 2017, accessed May 7, 2017 . 
7. ↑ Gunnar Meinhardt : Steven Holcomb († 37): Autopsy report on the mysterious death is available. In: welt.de . May 11, 2017. Retrieved August 11, 2017 . 
8. ↑ But Now I See: My Journey from Blindness to Olympic Gold , goodreads.com, accessed May 8, 2017.