Huddled around TV sets on a cold winter night in 1980, millions of Americans anxiously watched as the final seconds of the USA vs. USSR hockey game melted to 00:00 and ABC announcer Al Michaels coined that now famous phrase. The Americans had just shocked the sporting world by upsetting one of the most dominant hockey teams in the history of the Olympic games--at the height of the Cold War--and a country swelled with pride.

In Alpena, Mich., 10-year-old Doug Sharp and his friends, inspired by their new heroes, raced outside and constructed a bobsled course out of snow. It rose 10-feet-high, requiring a stepladder for the boys to reach the start.

Sharp's life would never be the same.

"Maybe this is predestined," says the now 31-year-old Sharp, an assistant track coach at the University of Louisville. In November, he and three teammates competed in the four-man bobsled event at the U.S. trials in Park City, Utah, on the course that will host the event for the 2002 Winter Games.

Of the 14 teams challenging for two team spots (two individuals also will be chosen as alternates), Sharp's team had a tight grip on the second slot going into the trials. Like the Olympics, each team had four chances down the track--two runs on separate days. The crews with the lowest collective times were named to the U.S. team. Based on their success over the past two years as well as promising races leading up to the trials, Sharp's team was favored to be one of the two.

"We eat, sleep, drink this 24 hours a day," he said this past fall during the intense final stages of training leading up to the trials. "It's been nonstop for four years."

And, according to Sharp, an active duty soldier in the U.S. Army, it's a punishing way to spend one's time.
"It's 52 seconds of pure violence," says the former all-state high school football player and hockey star. The 12-foot, 1,300-pound sleds can reach a blistering 90 miles per hour and pull up to five "instantaneous Gs" as they snake down an icy chute for anywhere between 47 and 63 seconds.

"It beats you up. You would not believe it."

Sharp is the brakeman on his team--which includes driver Brian Shimer, a four-time Olympian--so he enters the sled last.

"It's more painful back there. You get the tar beat out of you," he explains, because the back end of the sled absorbs every jerk, jolt and bump. "You're losing paint off the top of your helmet if the driver is off."

As the last man in the sled, it's Sharp's job to flip down the push bars that he and his crew use to heave the sled to life at the start of a run and to hit the brakes after they cross the finish.

Considering the enormous rush of adrenaline in their bloodstreams and the physical and mental strains the athletes endure at the start of a race, painful mistakes are a normal byproduct of the sport. When dropping into the sled for example, it is not uncommon for a bobsledder to have his calves filleted by the bottom of a trailing teammate's shoes, which are spiked with 454 needles, 1/8-inch long each, to grip the ice.

Along with perseverance, Sharp credits his doctorate in chiropractic medicine for helping him through the sport. In the past, he has treated most of the U.S. bobsled team and the entire Canadian team for their aches and pains.
"You'd be astounded at the injuries," he says.

Unflappable Enthusiasm

In 1997, while staying with his parents in Jeffersonville, Ind., Sharp decided to seek out U of L track coach Gene Weis and offer his services. As a star pole-vaulter at Purdue University, where he earned his undergraduate degree in exercise physiology, Sharp brought an impressive resume and an unflappable enthusiasm to the Cardinal program. Had it not been for a broken foot, he might very well have vaulted for the United States in the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta.

Sharp's message to Weis was simple: "Let's put U of L on the map in pole vaulting."

Weis loved the idea but cautioned Sharp that the pole vault program was virtually non-existent at U of L and that the team had very little equipment, which can carry a hefty price tag.

Sharp remained resolute. He brought his own poles to practice, searched around town for the other essentials and began building "the program up from the ground level"--literally.

After locating a vault box and hauling it to campus in his pick-up truck, Sharp was covered in dirt as he slammed through two layers of asphalt and a layer of rock with only a pick axe at the old training facility next to Parkway Field, Weis remembers.

"He formed a perfectly fitting hole for the vault box," Weis says with a hint of astonishment. "When Doug wants to get stuff done, he gets stuff done. He's just such a positive guy."

The team took to Sharp right away.

"He just energizes these guys," Weis says. "When he's around, they believe they can do anything. The vault might very well be the best part of our program now. It's near the top."

Despite his strict Olympic training regimen, Sharp has remained in contact with the U of L men's and women's pole vault teams through e-mail. Before he left, he developed a program for them that he says details "what they should be doing every single day up until March."

This type of planned approach to life--set goals, work hard to accomplish goals, set new goals--defines his character.

As a high school freshman, he watched his mentors, the senior student-athletes, garner award after award at a year-end ceremony. Later that night, he wrote down everything he wanted to achieve by the time he graduated.
"Sure enough, by senior year I had everything that they had and then some," he says.
Today, Sharp travels with a notebook that he uses to jot down his life goals, currently numbering about 300. They range from traveling the world for free, which he has already accomplished through bobsledding, to driving an Indy racing car to finding his one true love.

"I haven't even come close to achieving that sucker," he says with a chuckle.

On Sept. 11, he joined the rest of the country to watch in horror as the tragedy unfolded in New York, Washington, D.C., and Pennsylvania. He wondered if he should make some changes to his list.

"It seemed like what we were doing at the time was frivolous," says Sharp.

But after the president said to continue on with life, his Army commander paid him a visit and gave him a terse order: "Drive on."

"Now we feel we have to make it," Sharp says. "To be an Olympian in a time like this in America, I can't describe it. There are no words."

There is still the possibility that Sharp and the other men and women in the armed services competing in the games might be called to action before they begin.

"We're soldiers first," he says, but admits that it would be "heartbreaking" to abandon a dream he's coveted for 21 years.

On New Year's Eve 2001, Sharp was to learn if he made the team. Whatever his fate, he eventually wants to return to Louisville, establish roots and "give back to the area" that feels like home.

For now he continues to train the only way he knows how--at full speed--carrying with him a lesson he learned on a cold winter night in 1980.

Dreams do come true. You just have to believe.

Mike Ransdell '90A, '95G is the communications coordinator at Louisville Collegiate School.