Rhys Dacre hooked on bobsleigh

Press, 1 March 1988, Page 46

Rhys Dacre hooked on bobsleigh

r ’ I . By TIM DUNBAR {.! in Calgary American football has always been j Rhys Dacre’s first sporting love, but a taste for bobsledding is changing that. For i the former New Zealand 100 metres track champion, bobsledding will not be discarded now that he has been to the Winter Olympic.! , ! I ’ ! I Dacre was a crewman in the! New Zealand fourman sled which finished twenty-first in thp competition wind-up at Canada Olympic Park yesterday. | “I’m coming back to drive” said an enthusiastic Dacre after the race. “I love the sport.”! Top bobsledding ' . 'I

nations: like East Germany have drivers who are athletes while in Lex Peterson, New Zealand had someone noted more , for his fine driving skills than an explosive push, “If we get an athletic driver there’ll be no stopping us,” Dacre said. “I’ll give it a shot and go to driving school in Europe next season and go from there,” he said. Only 173 cm tall, Dacre has ; S p en t the last, two years playing American ( college football at Utah i State University. "Everything I have done, in my life has been geared to football,” Dacre: said. But i he is now beginning to think that it was the money aspect rather

than the Isport which had been the over-riding factor. Dacre (said that he inI I

tended to “do some houlseardhing” when he 1 returned home to' Christchurch. He had already had | a talk with Willie Gault, also a footballer and |a bobsledder. Gault, a wide receiver for the Chicago Bears, was ip the United States Olympic squad. j ( The New Zealand, athlete might have to make some decisions at the end of April when the N.F.L. draft comes out I and teams talk to free agents. According to Peterson, it would take Dacre a year or two to get his bobsleigh driving |to a high standard. , Dacre was originally Peterson’s brakemqn in the two-man sled put a torn achilles tendon

forced him out. But there was no way he was going to pull out of the fourman. I Money certainly would not be a motivation I in pursuing a career as a slider. I “We were selling sweat shirts and shovelling snow to survive,” Dacre said. I He said that the kiwi bobsledders had not had' a car to cruise around in and the utility truck they borrowed didn’t have room for all of them in front. “Some of us would sit in the back in minus 30deg. and your hair would just snap,” he said. The New Zealand brakeman, Peter Henry, another Christchurch athlete, is the only member

of the team taking a break; from the spbrt. Henry, an air (traffic controller, has the commitments of a wife, job and a new house.; i He | said he had' ambitions in the decathlon. j He' is the secondranked New Zealand decathlete after (Simon Poelman. Henry wants to do well ' in the 1990 j Commonwealth Games in Auckland. With a best of 7:100 (points he said he had “plenty of time to score! up.” His aim as part of the New Zealand bobsledding team' had been to make the Olympics. {“We've done that and that’s the end of the story, at the moment.”