From Hawaii to bobsleigh hero: Justin Kripps revels in being his sport's 'Mystery man'

Justin Kripps’ journey to becoming bobsleigh Olympic champion could not have started any further from the snow.

The Canadian was born in Hawaii: the tropical island that enjoys an average winter temperature of 78° (25.6° C).

In many ways, that set the tone for a man that doesn’t do things the ‘normal’ way.

His personal website was blocked in Russia during the Sochi 2014 Olympics due to a light-hearted underwear photo on social media, he once piloted a team that gave themselves the digital nickname #Beardmode, and he plays golf to find mental clarity. Kripps’ Twitter profile bio used to read: “Hawaiian-born beach bum, international man of mystery and seeker of adventure” - which seems to aptly sum him up.

That said, his way clearly works, to the tune of four world championship medals, an overall World Cup title, and Olympic gold at PyeongChang 2018.

Despite the disruption his team has experienced over the past two years, don’t write him off adding to that list at Beijing 2022.

From beach to bobsleigh

Kripps was born in Hawaii to UNICEF workers, and made the most of his time on the tropical island paradise in his formative years.

“We were fairly isolated,” the 34-year-old, who also holds an Australian passport, told The Star. “Our typical days were just running around in the jungle.

“One of the things I really loved about that time is if we got hungry we would just pick something off the tree and eat it.

“We would go back and forth between Hawaii and Summerland BC.”

Never straying far from his roots, the talented pilot remained close to this island by naming his sleds after Hawaiian goddesses.

“The two-man was Pele, the goddess of fire and lava. The four-man I first raced in World Cup races was Poliahu, the goddess of ice and snow.”

Justin Kripps: “Bobsleigh tends to find you”

Kripps’ Olympic dream started after watching Donovan Bailey capture gold for Canada at the Atlanta 1996 Olympics.

But after a promising career in athletics as a 60m and 100m sprinter, he soon realised that he may have reached his potential and would struggle to progress beyond college.

One day at a university meet in Vancouver, a bobsleigh recruiter spotted Kripps and invited him to try out the winter sport. The rest is history.

“Bobsleigh tends to find you, it’s a late entry sport,” the Canadian told CBC. “No one in Canada grows up wanting to do bobsleigh. We want to play hockey or football. Your kid suddenly wanting to hurl themselves down an ice shoot at 150 km/h is a bit of an unknown for parents!”

“Mine encouraged me to just be happy, and promise to give 100% at whatever it was that I wanted to do. So that’s what I did.”

“It turns out I don’t really hate winter so much!”

Natural explosive power combined with the determination to succeed meant that Kripps’ progress was quick.

After establishing himself as the nation’s leading brakeman, the future Olympic champion was selected for the Vancouver 2010 Games in Pierre Lueders’ four-man sled. His Olympic dream had finally come true.

The team finished fifth, and Kripps decided that he wanted to control the sled. He attended pilot school in the summer of 2010, spent the 2010-11 season on the developmental North American Cup circuit and competed at the 2011 World Junior Championships. He started the 2011-12 season on the Europa Cup circuit before fittingly making his World Cup debut as a pilot in Whistler.

In January 2014 with the Sochi Winter Games looming, Kripps landed his first World Cup win as a two-man pilot in Königssee, Germany.

Fear the beards

Kripps and his four-man teammates Tim Randall, Bryan Barnett, and James McNaughton initially made quite the impression in Russia with their bushy beards visible underneath their crash helmets. The team even have their own social media hashtag: #Beardmode.

A picture of the lumberjack-looking quartet in their underwear also ensured that the pilot’s personal website was ‘restricted’ in the Olympic host nation.

Unfortunately, they struggled to make the same impression on the ice. Kripps finished sixth in the two-man sled, prompting Team Canada to shuffle their rosters and upgrade his pushers for the four-man event. The move didn’t work and Kripps overturned in the second heat, meaning they failed to qualify for the final.

The road to Olympic gold

The inexperienced pilot went away and honed his craft.

The hard work paid off handsomely in the 2017-18 season when Kripps and brakemen Jesse Lumsden and Alexander Kopacz secured five podium finishes and the overall World Cup, before landing silver at the 2017 World Championships. It was Canada’s first world medal in men’s bobsleigh since 2012, and they went to the PyeongChang 2018 Winter Olympics in the form of their lives.

Kripps teamed up with Kopacz in Korea, and the pair tied German team Francesco Friedrich and Thorsten Margis for the Olympic gold medal.

“We were dialed in, having an awesome run,” Kripps told told ScoreGolf of their final run. “I remember thinking to myself coming up the final corner, ‘Alright, whatever it says on the clock, whether it’s first, second, third or, heaven forbid, fourth, I have to be happy because we executed as well as we possibly could.’ And then I saw the No. 1 pop up and I forgot about all that crap and started celebrating like crazy in the sled!”

Justin Kripps’ mental preparation: golf and yoga

It may come as some surprise to find out that one of the keys to a bobsledder’s Olympic gold medal performance was a slow and measured sport, played over a number of hours: golf.

In 2016, Bobsleigh Canada’s technical driving coach Lyndon Rush asked Kripps whether he had ever considered the sport as a means of off-season mental strength training.

The traits needed to be successful in both the sports, he argued, were more common than most would think.

“And that’s very similar to driving a bobsleigh — you get nervous or frustrated, and you have to do such fine movements with your hands as you’re driving down the track. So I could see the parallels," he continued to ScoreGolf.

Kripps and his playing mate, fellow bobsledder Chris Spring were novices, so they came up with novel ways to ensure that they had fun through the learning process.

“We always had little wagers on the line between the two of us, just to add to the pressure.”

That mental training was put into practise the next bobsleigh season, when Kripps and his teammates found themselves struggling to make podiums against opponents with superior equipment.

“We were getting smoked in every race,” he admitted. “I had two options. I could go into those races knowing that we had no chance of winning a medal and coast through the season... Or I could go in thinking, ‘If I’m absolutely perfect, there’s a chance the other guys will screw up enough that we get a good result.’

“We obviously chose the second option. Then, right before world championships, they changed an equipment rule and it evened the playing field quite a bit, and we ended up finishing second. Optimising yourself mentally is key. I think golf helped me do that.”

But golf was far from the only mental preparation Kripps used to ensure he was ready to perform.

The pilot, aka ‘Beastmode’, is a yoga fanatic, and his pre-competition ritual is to deep breathe peppermint oil while visualising the race.

The disrupted road to Beijing 2022

Kripps’ mental training will have been the perfect foil towards the Winter Olympics.

The 2020-21 season saw most of the North American sliders prevented from competing from large parts of the World Cup circuit due to coronavirus travel restrictions, meaning they missed out on crucial race preparation.

While Canada is lucky enough to have two top bobsleigh tracks in the country, the Calgary track was closed due to a mechanical issue, so Whistler was their only training option.

Then there was the hospitalisation of Kripps’ Olympic gold medallist teammate Kopacz, who contracted serious breathing problems as a result of the coronavirus in April 2021 and is now on the road to recovery.

Combine these issues to the brilliance of Francesco Freidrich, the German pilot who won his 12th and 13th world titles in 2021 and is the strong favourite to retain both the two and four-man titles in the Chinese capital, and size of the task before Kripps is clear.

But if there is any man up to the task, it is the Canadian. He thrives as the underdog, and has prepared for this challenge since he took up golf in 2016.

"The theme I'm trying to take, and I think a lot of people are, is being flexible and ready for anything at a moment's notice," he told CBC. “One of my secrets is to make a goal and a plan to get there. The plan has to be flexible, but the goal has to always be the priority.”

Don’t write off Kripps, or Canada, just yet.