It’s a sweltering 33C outside, in the shade.
Inside, it’s considerably cooler (10C) but that doesn’t keep Christine de Bruin and Janine McCue from working up a sweat at WinSport Winter Sport Institute’s Ice House in Calgary. The Canadian women’s bobsleigh duo is preparing for a second season together in a two-man sled, repeatedly shoving a training sled down the refrigerated (-5C) indoor bobsleigh start track Aug. 12 to improve their start times.
Racing a development sled in North American competition last season, de Bruin, a 26-year-old driver from Calgary and McCue, a 29-year-old brakeman from Cochrane, are trying to move up in Canadian Bobsleigh two-man female competition. Last season they raced in Calgary, Utah and Whistler, B.C.
“For us, right now, it’s a lot of the physical part of it. That’s how we both didn’t make the team last year,” de Bruin said of their first season together. “I was personally a 100th off the standard they had for us in the Ice House push. I had a bulged disc injury for three years.”
Under the watchful eye of de Bruin’s husband, Netherlands bobsleigh racer Ivo de Bruin, Christine de Bruin and McCue performed several starts during practice, between the starts of other bobsleigh and skeleton competitors training at WinSport’s Ice House.
McCue’s been on a steep trajectory in women’s two-man bobsleigh. The Bow Valley High School alum is braking for a Canadian driver with five year’s experience as both driver and brakeman. She was selected from a group of participants auditioning to brake for de Bruin at the beginning of last season. McCue was raw, but the de Bruin team saw something in the former Cochrane hockey player who works in the Cochrane Dodge parts department.
“Everything was all new,” McCue said. “Christine and her husband, Ivo, helped me a lot just to learn how to be a brakeman. The proper angles, how to run, how to sprint. That was the big thing. Coming from a hockey background, I had no idea how to run properly.”
With a North American racing season in the books and a summer of intense training on the go, de Bruin and McCue want to advance. But they’re looking up at Kaillie Humphries, Julia Corrente and Alysia Rissling in Canadian female two-man bobsleigh. With Humphries and Rissling entertaining the idea of driving four-man sleds this season, the time is right to drive for a spot in the women’s two-man program.
“We’d like to do Europa Cup this year. And then, this is the transition year. If we make the team, we’ll do Europa Cup and we’ll also do some World Cups as well,” Christine de Bruins predicts. “Hopefully, if those go well, then we’ll do World Championships (late winter 2016 in Igls, Austria). That’s what we’re working towards. Then, the following season, it will mostly be World Cup and, after that, the Olympics.”
