By Patrick Fergus
Eighty-eight miles per hour was the top speed the American bobsled reached as it turned the final corner and headed into the outrun. Erin Pac’s hands shot up into the dark Vancouver sky; surely the fourth and final run had been enough.
“I could see the number as we came up the out run, and I was already screaming in the sled,” Pac remembered. “I was already celebrating. I shouldn’t have but I already was.”
In a sport where the difference between victory and failure can be hundredths of a second and the slightest turn or bump can spell disaster. Still, she was confident that they’d done enough to secure a place on the podium.
And she was right.
USA’s final aggregate time of 3:33.400 landed Pac and her teammate Elana Meyers Taylor with bronze medals placed around their necks. Although the journey to Olympic glory was not what she had anticipated, Pac always knew she wanted to compete amongst the best in the world.
“When I was six years old, I always said I wanted to be an Olympian,” Pac said. “I didn’t know how or where, but that was always kind of the feat.”
A native of Farmington, Connecticut, she competed in track and field from as young as nine years old. Pac broke records in her high school career, including the 4x100 meter record, as well as marks in the middle school shot put. An all-around standout at the Farmington high school and state meets, she drew the attention of college programs, like Springfield College.
As the turn of the century approached, she was looking to continue her athletic career in college. Pac was initially recruited as a thrower by long-time track and field coach Jim Pennington who had headed the Pride for 31 years, leaving in 2015. Right away, a singular level of concentration stuck out to him.
“I saw a person that was very attentive,” Pennington said. “She always looked me in the eye, she was locked in on wanting to know how to get something better and then doing it to show herself and to show me that she could do these things.”
Pac wasn’t just looking for a new track, but a new home. Pursuing a degree in rehabilitation and therapeutic professions, her student experience was equally important and Springfield had cleared every hurdle.
“I loved everything about it when I came,” Pac recalled. “The humanics, the class sizes…it felt like it was going to be the best place for me,”
During regular season meets she would compete in the 100m hurdles, the 200m and the 4x100 relay. She polished her field events as well, as the variety of events she regularly practiced would prepare her for conference and national competitions, where she elevated into an heptathlete.
The heptathlon is one of the most physically and mentally demanding events in the sport. Pac took on seven unique events held over two days, each requiring specialized techniques and proper stamina.
In addition to the hurdles, 200m and 4x100 relay, Pac also took on the high jump, shot put, long jump, javelin throw and 800m. Pac’s determination and winning mentality propelled her in the ultimate all-around test for any track and field athlete.
“With Erin, you just wind [her] up and the only thing you have to do is get her to stop,” Paddington said.
When it came to those Olympic ambitions, the heptathlon had become the apparent choice for Pac to make her mark on the international scene. What happened next, however, she never envisioned.
Pennington sent a message to Pac with an unexpected opportunity - to try out for the American bobsled team.
“I had never even watched it in the Olympics, so I had not a clue what a bobsled was,” Pac said.
The team was looking for standout athletes, and Pennington couldn’t think of anyone better.
“I just felt that she had all the pieces to go and do it,” Pennington said. “I basically told her if she didn’t go and try out that I really didn’t want to talk to her about anything anymore because she was gonna miss out on an opportunity of a lifetime.”
Pac traveled to Boston and met with the recruitment team, and quickly found herself competing in a combine. They were trying to see how explosive an athlete could be, and if they were quick enough, an invite would soon follow to push the sled.
In a downhill rush, the rising college senior found herself in Lake Placid, NY, then soon over the border in Calgary, competing against women from all over the country for a seat in a red, white and blue covered capsule.
Some of the basic athletic skills translated over, but for Pac it was a different kind of challenge entirely.
“My body just had to really understand, like how to stay strong enough but calm at the same time,” Pac said, finding the mental nature of the sport just as arduous as its physical requirements.
“It’s like a rollercoaster but you can’t see it at all,” Pac said. “There’s the thrill, but there’s a terrifying piece to it.”
The chaos of the inside of a bobsled rarely translates for the viewer on television. It’s loud and cold. The pressure, sometimes worth five times the athlete’s body weight, is pushed down on their backs, and they are constantly being thrown into the non-padded walls of the sled at blistering speeds.
It is actually not uncommon for track athletes like Pac to be recruited for their speed and explosive power. After all, a crucial factor to a successful run is a good push.
In a bobsled pair, both athletes run alongside the sled, itself weighing hundreds of pounds, for the first 50 meters of the course, and try to gain as much velocity as possible before they load. After the sled is on its glacial path, it’s up to the driver to navigate the course using little handles, pulling back and forth to guide the runners of the bobsled through varying curves.
Pac quickly learned it was a sport of precision - when to and not to give the sled more push than it needed, and how to drive through the pressure to avoid a crash.
“I had to learn..How much do I give? How much do I not give?,” Pac said. “If you need to steer, it depends on the pressure of the curve, and how big the curve is. These are all things you learn along the way.”
She graduated in 2003, and with more time traveling with the team under her belt, Pac was now well aware of the fiercely competitive nature of vying for a spot on the Olympic squad. It was a cut-throat business, and at first it was nerve wracking. But now knowing how to train, which foods to eat and how best to prepare herself, Pac had placed herself on an Olympic trajectory.
After missing the cut as a pusher for the 2006 Olympics, she set out to truly distinguish herself instead as a driver.
“I left that day the team was named, and I learned how to drive a sled,” Pac said. “[I] set goals how I wanted to be ranked each year, and going into the next Olympic year, as a medal contender.”
Pac competed in the 2007 and 2008 FIBT, now known as the IBSF (International Bobsleigh and Skeleton Federation), in the mixed team events. As a part of the team, she took home silver in 2007 and bronze in 2008.
“I was very dedicated and had that tunnel vision, in all the years of my training there wasn’t a whole lot of veering off the path,” Pac said.
It was on Jan. 16 of 2010 that she had finally done it. Pac had been announced as the driver for the Two-Women Bobsled event and would represent her country on the frozen course in Vancouver.
Her former coach saw from her first days on campus that Pac always had the makings of an Olympian.
“You can see it in the actions [she made], that’s what makes the champion,” Paddington said. “She was someone that I felt really carried the tradition of spirit, mind and body of Springfield around with her.”
The skill of camaraderie and working well with others is one that Pac credits Springfield with instilling in her, and an important ability to have when she is barrelling down the ice.
Pac didn’t compete much with her Olympic teammate, Elana Meyers Taylor. Despite both being ranked as two in the squad, Pac tended to compete more often with the number one ranked brake-woman.
As Pac had learned in the past, the confidence between those within the sled was instrumental in their success.
“We had to learn to trust each other and really believe that we’re going to be the best fit for each other,” Pac said. “We’re at the Olympics, let’s do our absolute best, and get there and kick some butt.”
At the Vancouver games, the two found their cadence, and had been near top of the leaderboards for most of the event. Pac could hardly sleep the night before the final runs.
“I was up all night,” she said. “I had never been that close ever, and now I’m that close at the Olympics, it blew my mind.”
On their third run, the sled had hit concrete towards the bottom of the track, nearly injuring the runners. Still, heading into their final run, Pac knew that a medal was still within their ability.
Battling nerves, the German sled making their run ahead of them had crashed, a team who, according to Pac, never wrecked.
“I was very, very nervous,” Pac said, reassuring herself of the task at hand. “You just have to get it down. I had enough time in the bank, as long as I just went down on all four runners.”
Pac and Meyers Taylor propelled their sled down the push-off stretch, quickly boarding for the ride of their lives, it was a good push.
She met every curve of the course with an accurate tug of the handles, as the two Americans slid past the hundreds of camera lenses that met them at the out run and ushered them into the pantheon of Olympic medalists.
“It was magical in a sense,” Pac said. “It's kind of like letting go of all the weight, and just saying we did it.”
Through the unyielding drive and commitment to a childhood dream, Pac had become a champion at the highest level. Although coaches like Jim Paddington had seen the characteristics of such a gifted athlete, that wasn’t the case across the board.
“I was told a lot, from coaches and at the Olympic level that I wasn’t the best,” Pac said. “I knew I wasn’t the best athlete, I already knew that. But my hard work, my determination sometimes outweighed those that had talent.”
Pac announced her retirement from competitive sports in November of 2010, but her diligence certainly didn’t end at the medal ceremony.
Along with her husband Peter Blumert, she now owns Prevail Conditioning, a personal training center located in Santa Barbara, California. Recent work with youth girls soccer teams has her taking on a new mission: becoming a great mentor.
“Trying to give those girls a little bit more of that cutting edge,” Pac said. “I’ve been there, I know what you’re going through.”
Her work at Springfield in rehabilitation helps her at Prevail Conditioning, but the life lessons she took away have served her in every facet of life.
“That’s what Springfield does, it teaches people how to be better out in the world,” Pac said. “It doesn't matter what anyone else thinks or what anyone else says to you, be nice to them, be kind to them and have fun.”