Development of the instrumentation of a 4-man bobsled.

A bobsled race can be won or lost at the start, and the contribution of the athletes during the start phase is crucial. Nevertheless, the details of that contribution are not well understood, and we believe that, to improve team performance, it is necessary to determine the contributions of the individual athletes to the bobsled's speed throughout the start phase. The goal of this project was to develop the instrumentation for a 4-man bobsled that allows for measuring the propulsive forces of each athlete during the bobsled push start. We describe the final set-up and discuss potential applications. The instrumented bobsled can be used to provide novel and important information about individual athlete and team performance during the start phase of bobsledding.