Vic Emery

Victor ( " Vic" ) Emery ( born June 28, 1933, Montreal) is a former Canadian bob pilot. He was active in the 1960s and was once each Olympic champion and world champion in four-man bobsleigh. His older brother John Emery was also bobsledder.

Career

1956 Emery interrupted his skiing holiday in Switzerland in order to monitor as a spectator the Olympic Games in Cortina d' Ampezzo. He was of the bobsled race so excited that he wanted to pursue the sport itself. The following year he founded together with his brother John the Laurentian Bobsleigh Association. 1959 Emery took the first time at the world championships, the Italian bobsledder Eugenio Monti acted as her mentor. The training conditions were extremely unfavorable: The Canadian Olympic Committee refused any support, so that Canadians had to practice in gyms push starts and rarely got on the bobsled track in Lake Placid, the opportunity to practice sessions.

Before the Olympic Winter Games in 1964, the Austrians and Italians were seen as high as a house favorite. The Canadian Viererbobteam consisting of the Emery brothers, Peter Kirby and Douglas Anakin could only train four times on the Olympic bobsleigh run Igls, unlike many competitors who had arrived a week earlier. Quite surprisingly, undercut the Canadians in the first run the track record, held up to the end at the top and won the gold medal. Emery's recipe for success was that he had placed less emphasis on their weight but on their athletic abilities with his Anschiebern. Until then, it had been common to reach the necessary speed by as much mass; Emery, however, relied on a quick start contributing significantly to the development of modern bobsleigh at. Along with Kirby, he was in the two- fourth.

John Emery and Douglas Anakin left the team and was replaced by Gerald Presley and Michael Young. At the World Championships 1965 in St. Moritz, the Canadian foursome was again the fastest. In addition, Emery and Young won the bronze medal in the two-man bob.

Emery had studied at the University of Western Ontario and at Harvard University, where he earned an MBA. After the end of his sports career he worked as a hotel manager and settled in the British capital London. In addition, he commented in 1976 for Canadian television, the Olympic bobsled race.