It might take a physicist to figure out why the United States has not won an Olympic bobsled medal in 46 years.
So it seems perfectly fitting that the last American driver to do it was a physicist.
In Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy, in 1956, 40-year-old Arthur Tyler of Rochester, N.Y., drove a U.S. four-man bobsled to a bronze medal. No U.S. sled has placed higher than fourth since.
Tyler, who had earned a doctorate in physics from Michigan, put his training to good use by designing his own sleds. He used wind tunnels and included such special features as flexible runners and a single-lever brake system designed to reduce weight.
“He was a genius at bobsled,” Tom Butler, a member of Tyler’s four-man crew, said recently. “People didn’t give him the accolades he deserved.”
The U.S. was a bobsled power in the ’50s, and was expected to perform accordingly at Cortina d’Ampezzo, but in the two-man competition Olympic trials champion Waightman “Bud” Washbond and Tyler finished fifth and sixth, respectively.
Tyler had won the trials in the four-man bobsled and figured to contend for the gold medal in that event, especially after his sled turned in fast practice runs on the Olympic course.
The competition consisted of two runs on Feb. 3 and two more the following day. After the first day, Swiss chauffeur Franz Kapus was first with an aggregate time of 2:35.19, followed by Swiss butcher Max Angst at 2:35.26 and Tyler at 2:35.62.
Then the controversy began.
In those days, tracks were not refrigerated, which made them difficult to maintain. Huge ruts sometimes would develop, and officials might place pine boughs in them so drivers could see the ruts and straddle them.
Crashes were routine and injuries–some severe or even fatal–all too common. By the time the Olympic two-man event had ended, more than a dozen accidents had taken place on the Mt. Tofana course in practice or competition.
In the two-man event Tyler’s brakeman, Ed Seymour, injured a knee, and James Lamy joined Tyler, Butler and William Dodge in the four-man sled.
“It was a much more dangerous sport then,” Butler said.
Halfway through the four-man competition, the course was a hole-pocked mess. Chicago Tribune stories used such adjectives as hazardous, perilous and suicidal to describe it; and after a first day that included “several brushes with disaster” Olympic officials discussed possible remedies.
They included canceling the final runs or postponing them, but the event proceeded as scheduled.
After the first run on Feb. 4, four big holes were gouged on major curves on the track and Kapus considered skipping his final run–medal or not–because, as he put it, “somebody might get killed.”
Considering he had broken his back two years earlier on the same course, his fear was understandable, but his teammates talked him into continuing.
Their persuasiveness paid off in a gold medal in a time of 5:10.44. Italian runner-up Eugenio Monti finished at 5:12.10, and Tyler clocked in at 5:12.39.
Tyler’s fourth run, though, almost ended in disaster about two-thirds of the way down.
“We hit the wall so hard that Lamy lost both hands and stirrups and was holding on to me with his knees,” Butler said. “His butt was right out in the snow, but he got back in.
“We didn’t care where we finished . . . third, fourth, fifth, sixth. We were just happy to be down and alive.”
Tyler announced his retirement after the race, but three years later he won his first world title, taking the four-man event in St. Moritz, Switzerland, with Butler as his brakeman.
He once again announced his retirement. Butler, though, said Tyler planned to make two new sleds and compete in the 1960 Olympics in Squaw Valley, Calif. That changed when U.S. organizers decided not to build a bobsled run and the event was canceled for the 1960 Games. Tyler then retired for good.
“The disappointment was horrible because here we’d have had the two fastest sleds in the world and our own country doesn’t make a track,” Butler said.
Butler, 69, lives in Boca Raton, Fla., and is a manufacturer’s representative. He said he lost contact with Tyler about a decade ago.
A U.S. Olympic Committee representative said Lamy died in 1991. The committee had no information about Tyler’s or Dodge’s whereabouts, and efforts to reach them were unsuccessful.
Butler said he never imagined the country would not have another bobsled medal.
“It’s weird,” he said.
