Bill Schaffenhauer ( Eng. Bill Schuffenhauer ; June 24, 1974 , Salt Lake City , USA ) - American bobsledder , who has played for the US team since 2000 . He took part in three Olympiads, the most successful for him were the games in Salt Lake City in 2002 , where the athlete won a silver medal in competitions between the fours.
 Bill Schaffenhauer | |
|---|---|
 | |
| general information | |
| Citizenship |  USA |
| Date of Birth | June 24, 1974 (45 years) |
| Place of Birth | Salt Lake City , United States |
| Growth | 183 cm |
| Weight | 100 kg |
| Career | |
| Position | overclocking |
| In the national team | 2000 |
| Status | is competing |
| Last updated: May 4, 2010 | |
Biography
Early years
He was born in 1974 in the city of Salt Lake City and grew up in a dysfunctional family with drug addicted parents, the mother was a prostitute and was often abused right in front of the child. As a child, Bill had to steal, get food in the trash, once even he was caught during a robbery of a bicycle shop. All his friends were in gangs, the boy drank a lot and smoked marijuana. When parents were evicted from their homes, Schaffenhauer lived on the street and spent the night in parks, until one day his maternal grandmother took him and sheltered her at home in Roy . “She taught me to always go forward and never give up,” the athlete later recalled. [1]
Schaffenhauer was physically well-built and, on the advice of his grandmother, began to engage in athletics and American football while still in high school. Even then he dreamed of becoming an Olympian and confidently walked towards his goal. Later he began to decline to decathlon , entered the Weber State University , and, representing the university team, in 1992 won the national championship.
Participation in the Olympics
In 2000, together with the US Olympic team, Schaffenhauer was going to go to Sydney , but just before the start of the tournament, he suffered a serious injury to his ankle and was forced to abandon performances. At about the same time, one of his friends said that the national bobsled team was being trained in Park City , and he had every chance of getting into it. Thanks to a strong physique, the athlete immediately took on the role of an accelerator, and he began training with the other partners in the national team.
Initially, it was not supposed that Shaffenhauer would perform in Salt Lake City , but one of the American four-seat bobsleigh team showed steroids in their blood, so the coaches had to use a young athlete instead. That team, piloted by Todd Hayes , took second place in the fours, losing only thirty-hundredths of a second to the German national team. In the next two years, the athlete twice became the winner of the world championships, in 2003, winning Lake Lake Placid silver and in 2004 Königssee bronze.
In 2006, Schaffenhauer went to Turin , played in a double with Stephen Holcomb , but at the end of the races he took only the fourteenth place. After that, he decided to finish his career as a professional athlete and started working in family: since 2004, he cohabited with a girl, Ruthen Savage, and also raised two children. Soon the bobsleeder felt a new strength in himself and went to qualify for Vancouver , injured his neck during the preparation (two intervertebral hernia ), but chiropractors and physical therapists with the team helped him recover in time.
On qualifying races in January 2010, his crew with three other athletes took sixth place, which allowed the Schaffenhauer team to participate in the Olympics. “My dream has come true. I'm here. That's all I wanted, ”he said before the final race. “It would be nice to get a medal of any color.” As a result, their four did not perform very well, finishing only the thirteenth.
Notes
- ↑ Steve Almasy. Olympian's strength built from life on the streets (English) (inaccessible link) . CNN (February 22, 2010). The appeal date is June 4, 2010. Archived April 11, 2010.
Links
- Bill Schaffenhauer (him) (English) - page on the FIBT website