Dave Yugo has been busy lately. In between shopping excursions for the holidays he immersed himself in planning a two-month trip that will take him to Norway next month for the `94 Winter Olympic Games.
Yugo is heading for his first Olympics-not as an athlete, but as a member of the U.S. Olympic Committee’s medical team and trainer for the U.S. bobsled team.
His sporadic involvement with the USOC since 1978 culminates this year with participation in the games. Yugo, manager of Caremark-a physical therapy center in South Bend-has known for about 10 months that he would be helping in the Winter Olympicss.
Just days away from departure, the reality has finally sunk in.
“You put in some long, long days-your day may start at 5 a.m. and end at 11 p.m. And you’re busy every day. There’s not a lot of chances to sightsee, but there are a few free hours here and there when you can get around the town,” he said.
His first stop is Calgary, where the bobsled team is practicing before going on to Lillehammer, Norway.
Yugo knows he’ll need rolls of bandages and tape, tubes of ointment and bottles of aspirin, as well as lots of warm clothing and steel cleats to clamp over his boots. Although he’s never worked any previous Olympic Games, he knows what to expect from working at Pan Am and World Cup events.
For example, he knows that the pressure he feels during the Olympics is directly linked to the health of the athletes.
When he arrives in Lillehammer on Feb. 3, Yugo, along with a physician and another trainer, will set up the medical clinic for all American athletes in the Olympic Village.
In addition to working at the clinic, he will see to the physical needs of the bobsled team. That team’s 12 athletes actually form two two-man teams and two four-man teams.
As a young athlete playing football and running track in Merrillville, Ind., Yugo had held the Olympics in awe-a distant, unattainable dream. But once he entered college to study athletic training, he discovered a new avenue of Olympic involvement-as an athletic trainer.
His involvement with the world of Olympic athletes began in the summer of 1978, when he volunteered to work at the USOC training camp in Colorado Springs.
Over the years, he has continued to volunteer his services and has proven himself a trainer worthy of treating Olympic athletes.
“Dave has good skills, good management techniques and a strong work ethic,” says Bob Beeten, senior manager for the USOC’s clinical programs in Colorado Springs. “And it takes a knack. You have to quickly get to know the team members.”
Yugo was working for a South Bend hospital supply company as a physical therapist in 1992 when he was first asked to help with the bobsled program for the ’92 Olympics in Albertville, France.
He joined the team just for training and team selection in November of 1991. Normally, the team would have been chosen earlier, but the bobsled team was caught up in controversy. Two football players had petitioned the U.S. Bobsled Federation to allow them a late tryout since they missed regular try-outs because of the football season.
“It was a controversial and stressful three weeks,” Yugo recalled.
“Lawsuits were flying all over the place. It didn’t do a lot for team unity. There were a lot of unhappy people.”
Expectations ran high then. The team, with such big-name football players as Herschel Walker and Greg Harrell, was expected to do well and bring home a medal.
It didn’t-although the teams placed higher (ninth and 11th) than any American team since the 1948.
Expectations run high again this year. The U.S. team finished first in the World Cup in 1993-with events in Austria and Norway that Yugo worked-and it looks promising for this Olympics.
“Strength is important, but there is a technique to it. Getting into the sled smoothly, synchronizing it with four people isn’t easy,” said Yugo, who has taken his own spins in four-man and two-man bobsleds. The mile-long ride lasts between 52 and 56 seconds and takes 14 to 16 turns.
“There’s nothing like it. It’s quite a wild experience. You feel like you’re on a runaway train going downhill,” he said.
“You’re going 60 to 70 m.p.h. on this sheet of ice surrounded by Fiberglass walls. It’s phenomenal-the G-forces, gravitational forces-being applied to your body.
“It actually hurts, you can literally have the breath knocked out of you. It’s exhilarating. It can also be dangerous.”
