Steve Kornacki breaks down obscure Olympic sports on ‘Keeping Score’
Steve Kornacki explains how “Keeping Score” helps viewers understand obscure Olympic sports and the rules behind them.
Kris Horn’s father, Ken, went on a four-man bobsled run as a tourist in Utah about three years ago, just to try to wrap his mind around what his son’s life is like these days.
“They take you down at maybe 60 miles an hour,” Ken Horn recalled recently. “If I knew where the brake was, I would have stopped the thing and jumped off. I was terrified.”
Kris Horn’s younger brother, Kory, also did a tourist run in St. Louis last year. “I went with a friend of mine who does white-water kayaking and all this adrenaline-junkie stuff and he got out of the sled and his hands were shaking for the next 30 minutes,” Kory said with a laugh. “He said, ‘I’m not doing that ever again. That was too scary.'”
Bobsledding is not for the faint of heart. But Kris Horn, 31, is used to it by now. The former Pembroke High and UMass track star took up the sport in 2018 and this weekend will make his second appearance at the Winter Olympics, competing in Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy.
As a push athlete at the 2022 Games in Beijing, China, Horn was part of a Team USA four-man bobsled that finished 10th. Now he’s a driver on a four-man team that also includes Hunter Powell, Caleb Furnell and Carsten Vissering.
“It’s been exciting, for sure,” Kris Horn said of his new role. “I definitely enjoy it a lot more than being a brakeman. … These past couple of seasons have been pretty stressful, but this season I’ve had a great group of guys behind me and they’ve made it really easy for me.”
Here’s a look at how to follow Horn’s Olympic progress. Spoiler alert: You’ll have to get up pretty early if you want to watch the competition live.
How has Pembroke’s Kris Horn fared so far in Olympic bobsled?
With two of the four heats completed, Horn’s team is in ninth place out of 24 teams with a cumulative time of 1:49.61. German teams are running 1-2-3 right now; the one driven by Johannes Lochner is in first place with a time of 1:48.61 (a minute ahead of Horn’s Team USA). Germany’s Francesco Friedrich, who won gold in each of the last two Olympic four-man bobsled competitions, has his team in second place (1:49.04). The German sled driven by Adam Ammour is third (1:49.20).
Horn’s team was in eighth place after the first run Saturday morning with a time of :54.60. Their second run checked in at :55.01. They had strong starts in both races with the third-fastest time in the first heat (4.76 seconds) and the second-fastest time in the second heat (4.74 seconds).
What’s next for Pembroke’s Kris Horn at the Olympics?
Horn, the driver of one of Team USA’s four-man bobsled teams, has two races left. Those will be Sunday morning, beginning at 4 a.m. (ET) and 6:15 a.m. (ET).
There are 24 teams still alive (down from 27 at the start), including a second one from the USA. Final standings are determined by adding up the times of all four heats. At the Beijing Games in 2022, the winning four-man sled had a time of 3:54.30. Horn’s 10th-place team at those Games clocked 3:57.06.
How to watch four-man Olympic bobsled
Here’s the complete bobsled schedule for this weekend with four-man events in bold. Events will be shown live on USA Network and streaming on Peacock:
Saturday, Feb. 21
4:00 a.m. ET: Four-Man: Run 1 (live on Peacock, USA Network)
5:55 a.m. ET: Four-Man: Run 2 (live on Peacock)
11:00 a.m. ET: Four-Man Run 1 and Run 2 (re-air on USA Network)
1:00 p.m. ET: Two-Woman Run 3 (NBC)
3:15 p.m. ET: Two-Woman Final Run (NBC, Peacock)
5:15 p.m. ET: Four-Man Run 1 and Run 2 (re-air on NBC)
8:45 p.m. ET: Four-Man Run 1 and Run 2 (re-air on USA Network)
8-11p.m. ET: Two-Woman Run 3 and Final Run (NBCPrimetime in Milan)
11:30 p.m.-1 a.m. ET: Four Man Run 1 and Run 2 (re-air on NBC Olympic Late Night)
Sunday, Feb. 22
1:00 a.m. ET: Two-Woman Run 3 and Run 4 (re-air on USA Network)
4:00 a.m. ET: Four-Man: Run 3 (live on Peacock)
6:15 a.m. ET: Four-Man: Final Run (live on Peacock, USA Network)
7:15 a.m. ET: Four-Man Final Run (re-air on NBC)
11:00 a.m. ET: Four-Man Third and Final Runs (re-air on NBC)
How has the U.S. done in four-man Olympic bobsled?
Four-man bobsled has been an Olympic sport since 1924, except when it was briefly changed to a five-man competition at the 1928 Games at St. Moritz, Switzerland. The USA was very competitive early on, winning gold and silver in both 1928 (St. Moritz) and 1932 (Lake Placid, New York); gold and bronze in 1948 (St. Moritz); silver in 1952 (Oslo, Norway); and bronze in 1956 (Cortina, Italy).
After that, the U.S. was shut out of medals until 2002 in Salt Lake City, Utah (silver and bronze). Famed driver Steve Holcomb led the USA to a gold medal in 2010 (Vancouver, Canada) and a silver in 2014 (Sochi, Russia). Holcomb died in 2017 at the age of 37.
Who’s the team to beat?
The Germans won gold and silver at each of the last two Olympics — in Pyeongchang, South Korea (2018) and Beijing, China (2022). Francesco Friedrich piloted both of those winning sleds; he also won gold in the two-man bobsled each time.
Germany finished 1-2-3 in the two-man bobsled competition at these Olympic Games with Johannes Lochner and Georg Fleischhauer winning gold and Friedrich piloting the silver medal-winning team. Lochner entered these Games as the top-ranked World Cup pilot in both the two-man and four-man events.
The United States’ lone two-man sled (Frankie del Duca and Joshua Williamson) finished fourth in 3:41.96 after entering the day a tenth of a second behind bronze.
