A former Toledo football player and track athlete is slated to compete this month in the games of the 20th Winter Olympiad on the USA men's four-man bobsled team.
Brock Kreitzburg, 29, will compete as a push athlete and brakeman for the country's No. 1 bobsled team.
Kreitzburg graduated from Toledo in 1998 after excelling as a wide receiver on the football team and as a decathlete on the track team. He caught 130 passes and scored 11 touchdowns in his career with Toledo, grabbing second team all-MAC honors in 1997 with 44 receptions and seven touchdowns.
After workouts with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers did not land him on the team, he was discovered in a training facility while running on a treadmill by a recruiter for the U.S. Bobsled and Skeleton Federation. Kreitzburg then attended a bobsled training camp and was placed on the national team in 2002.
Kreitzburg's career continued to blossom and was recently promoted to the No. 1 sled with defending Olympic silver-medalist driver Todd Hays for a World Cup event in Germany. Hays is the second-ranked four-man driver in the world and the top-ranked in the two-man.
In their final competition before the Olympics, Hays and his USA 1 teammates, including Kreitzburg, took first place at the World Cup race in St. Moritz, Switzerland.
The four-man bobsled event airs on NBC at 8 p.m. Feb. 24 and 25.
Miami women's track team prevails at indoor championship
The Miami women's team won the All-Ohio Indoor Track and Field Championships on Saturday as two athletes broke records for the school.
Sarah Landau and Lashonda Davis each achieved school bests as Miami scored 156.33 points and dominated the other eight schools that competed in the meet at the Malcolm Athletic Center in Findlay.
Landau, competing in the pole vault, reset her own school record for the third week in a row with a winning height of 13 feet, three inches. Her previous record was 13 feet.
Davis also set a school record that she already owned, winning the 60 meters in 7.44 seconds. That time bested her 7.48 mark that she set last year.
Miami notched only one win in the middle distance events but made up for that with consistency elsewhere as they won five of eight individual track events. Jennie Stoll and Carol Eckerly each took distance events for Miami.
The RedHawks also won three of six field events, as Davis added a long jump win, and Kristina Bolterstein won the high jump with a season-best jump of five feet, seven inches.
Rounding out the top three behind the RedHawks were fellow MAC schools Toledo (106 points) and Bowling Green (94 points). Ohio finished the meet tied for 5th place with Findlay at 50 points.
- Justin Whelan
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Justin Whelan
