How ironic that 1986 Daytona 500 winner Geoff Bodine may look back at his storied racing career and decide his single greatest glory came in a race he didn't even drive in.
Standing alongside the Olympic sliding track Saturday night in Vancouver, Canada, with the four-man American bobsled team one final run away from its long-coming gold medal, the racing veteran who was the driving force behind their American-made "Night Train" sled gave the team all he knew to give.
"I'm a racer, I know you need to concentrate, so I just looked at them and relayed the confidence,'' Bodine, 59, told FanHouse on Tuesday. "I knew how difficult it was. I knew they had it in them.
"Afterward, when they won, they let me take a photo with the gold medal around my neck and let me tell you, it felt good."
That gold medal felt good for the entire country, too. Amidst a sea of sleek, muscled athletes, here was stocky, balding Steven Holcomb, sort of an Olympics everyman, flying off the starting line with his teammates in blazingly fast starts, piloting his sled through the harrowing "50-50 curve" and setting track records on a course infamous for its crashes.
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