Olympic Bobsled Coach Chris Fogt on Winning Under Pressure

By Kody King, Host of Behind the Premium.

Picture a four-hundred-pound sled flying down an icy track at ninety miles an hour, carrying four people with no brakes and no seatbelts. The difference between an Olympic medal and fourth place comes down to about three tenths of a second. Who do you want directing the program that builds those teams? For Team USA, the answer is Chris Fogt.

Most of us will never push a bobsled, yet the way Chris builds a team under that kind of pressure applies well beyond the ice. He is a three-time Olympian, a 2014 silver medalist, and a Lieutenant Colonel in the United States Army, and today he is the head coach of USA Bobsled. On this episode of Behind the Premium, he joined me for an honest conversation about finding overlooked talent, leading when the stakes are highest, and giving kids a real path back into sports.

What follows are the moments that stayed with me, including how Chris finds athletes who have no idea they are athletes yet, the lessons he took from his own coach, and why he built a platform to make youth sports easier to reach. It begins with how a track kid from Utah reached an Olympic podium.

From College Track to the Olympic Podium

Chris never grew up dreaming about bobsled; he ran track in college until a recruiter noticed him at a meet and invited him to try out. Bobsled is a transfer sport, which means the program looks for three qualities: speed, power, and strength. Because Chris had all three, he made the team in his first year while keeping his ROTC commitment, and he found the Army's World Class Athlete Program at Fort Carson, which let him serve and compete at the same time.

The path was anything but tidy. He competed in his first Olympics in 2010, then deployed to Iraq for a year barely three months later. He came back, raced again in 2014 and won silver in the four-man event, then returned for a third Games in 2018. If you want a portrait of pursuing two demanding careers at once, his story delivers it.

They Have Been Training Their Whole Life and Do Not Know It

Here is the insight from Chris that I keep revisiting. Most of the athletes he needs are already out there competing, with no idea that bobsled is even an option, so he spends much of his year recruiting sprinters, football players, and other college athletes who can run, jump, and move serious weight. What they do not realize, he explained, is that they have probably been training for bobsled their whole lives. That is a valuable reminder for anyone who hires people or builds teams, because the talent you want may not arrive with the title you expected, so evaluate the underlying skills first.

Leading Under Pressure, the Brian Shimer Way

Chris moved into coaching in 2023 and took over as head coach a year later. He credits much of his philosophy to his own coach, Brian Shimer, and two lessons stuck. The first is to show up with real passion every day, even when you feel terrible, because your team reads your energy. The second is to stay tough and positive when the conditions turn brutal. Bobsled races never stop for weather, and Chris has stood atop a track in eight-degree wind while rival teams retreated to the corner and skipped their warm-ups. His crew stayed outside and went to work, because that lead-from-the-front discipline came straight from the Army and carried into how he runs the program today.

Fueling Elite Performance When the Conditions Keep Changing

Feeding a bobsled team is its own complicated puzzle, because the men can weigh around 225 pounds and therefore eat enormous amounts while relying on protein and creatine. The women face the opposite challenge, staying strong enough to push a heavy sled while remaining under strict weight limits, supported by a nutritionist and regular bloodwork that manage details like iron and vitamin D. Weather adds another layer, because Chris has watched snowfall thin out at training sites he has visited since 2008, so the team travels more and arrives in Norway and Latvia early, where the tracks hold ice sooner. The principle underneath all of it is simple: when the conditions shift, you adapt and keep going.

Why Youth Sports and Confidence Matter So Much

Chris is also building something meaningful off the ice. About two-thirds of children quit sports before turning twelve, often because the environment became too competitive far too early. He wants to widen that door again, because his belief is that youth sports are not really about scholarships; instead they teach kids how to work hard, build friendships, and get through difficult moments. So he created Arena Sports, a youth sports marketplace that works a bit like Airbnb for camps and coaching, where parents can find nearby camps within minutes and part-time coaches can list their programs without living on social media. Chris runs a speed and agility camp for about twenty kids himself, co-founded the company with former college and G League player Steven Ashworth, and built the app with privacy in mind, so participant data is never sold or shared.

How to Get Involved

Interested in trying out for the team? Chris is looking for college athletes with speed, power, and strength who are also a little fearless. You can post a combine at GMTM or find tryout details at USA Bobsled and Skeleton. Active-duty soldiers can explore the Army World Class Athlete Program, and parents and youth coaches can join the community through Arena Sports. You can also connect with Chris on LinkedIn.

Chris packs more discipline into a single week than most of us manage in a month, and his perspective on talent, leadership, and grit is worth your attention. Watch the full interview on the Behind the Premium channel, and borrow whatever helps you lead your own team.

For more conversations like this one, read our sit-down with insurance veteran Paul Flowers Jr. on ethical leadership, or see how HR leaders prove their impact on Benefits 3.0. Behind the Premium is produced in partnership with Weltrio, which helps self-funded employers lower healthcare costs without cutting benefits or access.

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