Olympic Bobsled 2014: Complete Guide for Sochi Winter Olympics

The high-speed bobsled event begins its run at the Winter Olympics on Feb. 16 and finishes on Feb. 23.

Although the sport receives little attention most of the time in the United States, it is put in the spotlight every four years at the Olympics.

Germany has been the dominant country in recent Olympic bobsled competition, but an American team won the gold medal in the four-man bobsled event at the 2010 Winter Olympics.

American women have won a medal in each of the three Olympics that featured the women’s bobsled event.

Olympic bobsled competition, officially known as bobsleigh, consists of three events: men's four-man, men's two-man and women's bobsled, which is a two-person competition.

Participants in each discipline complete four runs over two days, with the lowest cumulative time from the four runs determining the order of finish and medal awards.

Bobsledders reached speeds of nearly 95 miles per hour at the Vancouver Games four years ago, but the track for this Olympics is expected to be slower.

The venue for the 2014 bobsledding event is the Sliding Center Sanki, located in Rzhanaya Polyana, Russia, which is about 37 miles from Sochi. The course is 1,500 meters long, not including the 314-meter braking area at the end of a run. According to a CBC story, maximum speed is 135 kilometers per hour, which is about 84 miles per hour.

Bobsled competition will begin Feb. 16 with heats in the two man-event. Bobsledding concludes Feb. 23 with the final heats of the four-man event.

The United States will have three teams competing in the women's and two-man bobsled competitions and two in the four-man event. The U.S. is considered a gold-medal contender in all three.

Bobsledding first became an Olympic event in the 1924 Winter Games in Chamonix, France. Only four-man bobsled competition was held in 1924, and it was changed to a five-man event in the 1928 Winter Games before reverting back to a four-man competition in 1932.

Two-man bobsled competition was added to the Olympics at the 1932 Winter Games at Lake Placid, N.Y., and women's bobsledding became an Olympic sport in 2002 at Salt Lake City, Utah.

No bobsledding competition was held at the 1960 Winter Games in Squaw Valley, N.Y., but it has been an Olympic event in every Winter Games since.

Americans captured the gold medal in the three disciplines the first year each was an Olympic event, and American women have medaled each of the three years the Olympics featured women's bobsledding.

Germans have dominated men's bobsledding, winning the gold medal at the last three Olympics in the two-man event and taking first place in four of the past five Olympics in the four-man category. A team from Germany (including East Germany and West Germany when the country was divided) has won 15 gold medals in the 38 men's Olympic bobsled competitions held. Switzerland is next with nine gold medals in men's events.

Germany's Andre Lange has won four Olympic bobsled gold medals, the most in history. He won his second straight two-man gold medal in 2010 but finished second in the four-man competition that year before retiring.

An American four-man team led by pilot Steven Holcomb finished first in the 2010 Olympics, giving the United States its first men's bobsled gold medal since 1948. German teams finished second and fourth.

Canadian teams finished first and second in the women's bobsled competition at the 2010 Games, with Kaillie Humphries and Heather Moss capturing the gold medal.

Schedule of heats for the 2014 Olympic bobsled competition:

February 16: Two-man heats 1 and 2, 11:15 a.m. ET

February 17: Two-man heats 3 and 4, 9:30 a.m. ET

February 18: Women's heats 1 and 2, 10:15 a.m. ET

February 19: Women's heats 3 and 4, 11:15 a.m. ET

February 22: Men's four-man heats 1 and 2, 11:30 a.m. ET

February 23: Men's four-man heats 3 and 4, 4:30 a.m. ET

All events will be streamed live on NBCOlympics.com.

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