Geoffrey
Bodine's
Major
Accomplishments
*Listed in
the
Guiness Book of World
Records for winning 55 races in one
season
(NASCAR
Modified Series).
* Won Modified "Race of Champions" Twice
* Won six Busch Grand
National races
*1982 Winston
Cup Rookie of-the-year.
*1986 Daytona 500
Winner.
*1987
International Race
of Champions (IROC) Champion.
*3rd in
Winston Cup Points in 1990
*1992
Busch Clash
Winner.
*1994 Winston Select
(All-Star Race) Winner.
*1994 Busch Pole Award Winner (5 poles)
*500th Career Winston Cup
Start
Talledega - October 11, 1998.
*18 Career Winston Cup
victories.
*37
Career Winston Cup
Poles.
*Introduced
power steering and
full-face helmet to Winston Cup
Racing.
*Designed spring-
loaded driver's seat used by many
drivrs in several NASCAR divisions
(many credit this seat with his
survival from his Truck crash at
Daytona in Feb. 2000).
*Voted (over Jeff Gordon)
into "Legends of the Glen," and was
inducted 9/12/99.
*Has won races
in NASCAR: Modifieds, Busch Grand
National, Winston Cup and
CraftsmanTrucks.
*Won Winston Cup
Races on three different road courses:
Riverside, Sears Point and Watkins Glen.
*Named as the first quarter winner
for 2000, of the National
Motorsports Press Association/ Pocono Spirit
Award.
*Long-time active
participant in the Make-A-Wish
Foundation and Honorary Board of
Directors Member.
**Spearheaded the effort that developed
the Bo-Dyn Bobsled which is the envy of
the
bobsled world.
How Geoffrey Got Involved
with the
USA Bobsled Project
"I was watching
the bobsled competition during the '92 Olympics and
the American team was getting beat pretty bad. I
found
out we were buying our sleds from the Europeans, so
you know they wouldn't sell us anything that would
beat them. I talked to some friends up in
Connecticut at Chassis Dynamics and tried to figure
out how we could help. I made a trip to Lake Placid
to take a ride in a bobsled with one of the bobsled athletes. That made up my mind pretty quickly I wouldn't be helping them with the driving aspect…
those things are really fast and pretty frightening!
We figured the best way to help was to design and
build a better American made sled…so that's what we did. Now the US Olympic teams, men and women's are using the Bo-Dyn bobsled. Now, the Europeans would
like some of our sleds!"
click logo for USA Bobsled Site
Bo-Dyn Bobsled's First Medal is
Gold!
Bobsledders grab unexpected gold
SCOTT FOWLER
Staff Writer - Charlotte Observer
February 20, 2002
PARK CITY, Utah - On Tuesday afternoon, a few minutes before the first-ever Olympic competition
in women's bobsledding was about to take place, NASCAR driver Geoffrey Bodine got a call at his office.
Bodine wasn't there. So the caller,
U.S. women's bobsled driver Jill Bakken, left a cheery message on his voicemail. She wanted him
to know she was about to make her first run down
the hill.
She wanted him to make sure to bring some racing souvenirs for the bobsledders when he got to Utah later in the week.
And she wanted him to know that she was about to win a gold medal.
"She told me exactly what she was going to do!"
said an exultant Bodine, seconds after learning
from an Observer reporter that Bakken and her teammate Vonetta Flowers had indeed won the first gold medal ever given in women's bobsledding
Tuesday night. "I can't believe it! This is the
day we've been waiting for for 10 years!"
Bodine, who finished third in Sunday's Daytona 500, is the patron saint of U.S. bobsledding. Over the past 10 years, he has poured in $250,000 of his
own money and weeks of his time in an effort to reestablish the United States in the sport. He and partner Bob Cuneo of Chassis Dynamics in
Connecticut built and rebuilt the Bo-Dyn bobsled -- an American-made model that applies NASCAR technology to bobsledding.
The Bo-Dyn sled has helped the U.S. athletes catch back up in a sport
in which they had fallen woefully behind. Tuesday's medal was America's first in the sport in 46 years.
Bakken and Flowers pushed the Bo-Dyn
sled off to a track-record start, and then Bakken drove it perfectly all the way down. Their time of 48.81 seconds was easily a track record.
It was no fluke. On the second run, the USA-2 team did almost as well. Again, their 48.95 time led the field, giving them an overall time of 1:37.76 and
a win by three-tenths of a second over the German-1 sled.
That set off a joyous celebration, as the crowd of 15,000 kept screaming and Bakken and Flowers hugged every relative in sight.
Bodine was sorry he missed it. He plans to come to Salt Lake City today with a bushel of NASCAR souvenirs and tickets for the four-man bobsled competition this weekend.
"This medal is about the kids, and they deserve
it," Bodine said. "I'm in the background. But I am so happy about this. Bobsledding had a big black cloud over it when I got into it. And now it's got
a gold cloud hanging over it instead."
USA-2 Women's 2-man Bobsled
4-Man Bobsleds Strike Silver/Bronze
at
Salt Lake
Geoffrey Celebrates with
Brian Shimer and
Todd Hays
By KEVIN FEE
Knight Ridder Newspapers
February 23, 2002
SALT LAKE CITY - Todd Hays just wanted a medal. Any medal. Brian Shimer just wanted to end his career with a respectable finish. A top-10 finish.
"What an amazing ending," Hays said.
It was for both drivers, as they ended 46 years of Olympic frustration in the bobsled for the U.S.
men.
Hays' USA No. 1 won the silver, and Brian Shimer's USA No. 2 took the bronze in the men's four-man competition Saturday before 15,000 fans
at Utah Olympic Park. While Olympic rookie Andre Lange of Germany drove his sky-blue sled to the
gold medal, the United States' teams were tickled
to join him on the podium.
"Losing in the two-man stings like nothing ever has," Hays said. "But we took that pain and put it into preparation and here we are." Hays drove his fire-engine-red sled that included Randy Jones,
Bill Schuffenhauer and Garrett Hines to a 3:07.81 four-run finish. Germany's Lange ended in 3:07.51, and Shimer, Mike Kohn, Doug Sharp and Dan Steele finished in 3:07.86.
The United States had not won an Olympic medal in the four-man since Arthur Tyler took the bronze at the 1956 Cortina Games and had not won two medals since 1948 at St. Moritz.
Hays just held off Shimer, who staged a rally to
win his first medal in his last Olympic race. The 39-year-old Shimer passed World Cup champion Martin Annen of Switzerland on the final run. Hays led after the first two runs, but dropped to third
after the third run. "After the third run, we were like, `What happened?´´´ Jones said. "We lost four-tenths of a second just like that. In bobsled, that´s an eternity, but we have it together and pulled it out."
A drastic change in the weather
set up a fairy-tale finish for the Americans.
While a sun-washed track and spring-like temperatures greeted the 30 teams on their first run, a storm front delivered freezing temperatures and snow squalls that made their final runs more challenging.
Shimer's four-team team was disqualified in 1994
in Lillehammer when the team's sled runners were warmer than rules allowed, and it finished two-hundredths of a second away from a bronze in 1998 in Nagano. It was difficult to figure out for whom Hays was more excited - himself or for Shimer, who overcame injuries, two knee surgeries and
doubts by his own coaching staff to return for one more Olympic fling. "We are really happy with the silver, I'll tell you that much," Hays said. "To
see Brian, in his fifth Olympics, the last one of his life, pull off the fastest run of (the final run) and battle back to win the bronze, if that's not a storybook finish, I don't know what is."
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