After the first two heats of the four-man bobsled races at the 2026 Milan Cortina Olympics, the USA team with Latter-day Saint Caleb Furnell is in the top 10.
The USA sled, with pilot Kris Horn, is ninth after two runs at the Cortina Sliding Center in Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy. Furnell is a push athlete with Hunter Powell and Carsten Vissering.
In the four-man bobsled, the men push a bobsled, jump into it and tuck their heads in as the pilot steers it on the twists and turns of the icy track, with the fastest sleds reaching speeds up to 85 mph (137 kilometers per hour). Places are determined by hundredths of a second.
During the first heat, the Team USA sled time was 54.60 seconds, tying for eighth place with a team from South Korea with pilot Jinsu Kim, according to the results on Olympics.com. They were 0.69 seconds behind first place — a sled piloted by German Johannes Lochner, which set a track record with a time of 53.91 seconds.
For the second heat, the Team USA sled time was 55.01 seconds, which was 11th place, and 0.32 seconds behind first place sled — another German team piloted by Adam Ammour with a time of 54.69 seconds. The second heat had a couple of track delays due to midtrack crashes by sleds from Austria, France, and Trinidad and Tobago.
Team USA’s combined time for the heats is 1:49.61 — exactly 1 second off the 1:48.61 time of the lead sled, piloted by Lochner of Germany. The USA team is 0.22 seconds from fifth place and 0.41 seconds from the bronze medal spot.
Team USA has two sleds in the four-man bobsled competition. The sled piloted by Frankie del Duca is 12th after the second heat with a combined time of 1:51.02 seconds.
About Caleb Furnell
Furnell, 24, is a graduate of Utah Valley University in Orem, Utah, where he was a sprinter on the track team and also set school records. From Lee’s Summit, Missouri, Furnell thought his athletic career was over, but a friend suggested he try out for a bobsled combine.
After trying out, he was invited to the USA National Push Championships in Lake Placid, New York, in September 2025. He was one of the 12 push athletes named to the World Cup teams.
The 2026 Milan Cortina Games are his first Olympics.
When to watch
The bobsled, or bobsleigh, competition consists of four races, timed to the hundredth of a second. The team with the fastest total time is the winner.
The first two heats were Saturday, Feb. 21. The final two heats are on Sunday, Feb. 22, beginning at 10 a.m. Italy time (2 a.m. Mountain). The fourth and final race begins at 12:15 p.m. (4:15 a.m. Mountain). The top 20 of the 27 sleds will race in the last heat.
