Geoffrey Bodine has stood atop one of the grandest stages in NASCAR as champion of the Daytona 500. But not even that experience could prepare the veteran driver for the feeling that swept over him last weekend, when a bobsled he helped design snapped a 62-year gold-medal drought for the United States in the Winter Olympics.

“

... to see them win that gold medal, it just makes you proud. It fills you up.

”

-- GEOFF BODiNE

"In racing, I had my fan base of so many people, and I appreciate every one of them who have cheered for me through my career, which by the way isn't over," said Bodine, winner of 18 races on NASCAR's premier series, including the 1986 Daytona 500. "But in the Olympics, the fan base is just a little bit larger. It's the whole country. It's an overwhelming, incredible feeling to know you're a part of something that big. Very few people get to experience that kind of feeling. To be a part of that is just incredible. It's very, very hard to describe. I'm just proud to be an American and proud to be a part of it."

Bodine's part was not a small one -- along with a Connecticut company called Chassis Dynamics, he reinvented the type of sleds used by the U.S., which once employed second-hand European models. Since the mid-1990s, the nonprofit Bo-Dyn Bobsled Project has produced and donated sleds to the American team, which during that same span has seen a gradual improvement in performance. The culmination occurred at Whistler, British Columbia, where the two-person women's team of Erin Pac and Elana Myers won bronze, and the four-man squad of Steve Holcomb, Curt Tomasevicz, Steve Melser and Justin Olsen won gold for the U.S. in that discipline for the first time since 1948.

Bodine hadn't planned to be there -- the trip to ski area two hours north of Vancouver was an expensive one, and he didn't want to be a burden on those there to compete. But late last week, he received a telephone call from a member of Bo-Dyn's board of directors, telling them that the athletes wanted him on hand. Given that Holcomb's four-man team had been the class of the World Cup circuit, expectations were high. In the end Bodine was swept up in the celebration, and was even pulled up on stage for photos after the team members had received their gold medals.

"To see the athletes do well, and especially to see them win that gold medal, it just makes you proud," Bodine said. "It fills you up."

It was a deserving tribute, given that the U.S. Bobsled and Skeleton Federation has 17 Bo-Dyn sleds in its fleet, and used Bo-Dyn models exclusively during the Vancouver Games. What a contrast that was to 1992, when Bodine was watching the Olympics from Albertville, France, on television, and was astounded to hear commentator John Morgan explain that one reason for U.S. struggles was that American sleds were usually castoff models from the European countries that dominated the sport. Bodine investigated further and found out that U.S. bobsledders also had to raise money to buy their own equipment. (Continued)