Albany

Although the good citizens of St. Moritz and Davos in Switzerland dispute it, Albany has staked a credible claim as the birthplace of bobsledding.

With the sport due to receive its quadrennial showcase when the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics competition gets under way Friday, the colorful and calamitous history of bobsledding in late-19th-century Albany will be examined at a lecture on Saturday by a bobsled historian.

"It's the only winter Olympic sport where the U.S. can legitimately claim origin and Albany is where it started," said Christopher Lindsay, an attorney who lives in Troy. He's a founder of the local Northhenge Bobsled Club and a former official with the U.S. Bobsled & Skeleton Federation.

His lecture is sponsored by Friends of the New York State Library, which Lindsay used in his research.

"Bobsledding became hugely popular because it was hurly-burly, very fast and there was always the possibility of a crash," Lindsay said.

"The Bob Sled Craze Hits Albany" read a headline in a Jan. 30, 1886, article in Leslie's Weekly, which included an illustration.

Newspaper reports confirmed that Albany held bobsled races at its winter carnival as early as 1885, two winters ahead of the Swiss. In fact, Stephen Whitney of Albany introduced the bobsled to Davos and made the first trial runs there on his one-man sled, Maude S., just before Christmas in 1888. Whitney won the International Shield Race in Davos early in 1889, according to research unearthed in 1997 by Virginia Bowers, the late city historian.

Although Albany's claim is still contested, a book published in Switzerland by Max Triet, "100 Jahre Bobsport" ("A centenary of bobsleighing"), conceded that the earliest known bobsled picture was from Albany in 1886.

Bobsledding was an outgrowth of the city's bustling lumber district along the Hudson River in north Albany near today's Erie Boulevard. It morphed into a Victorian-era spectacle that whipped crowds of onlookers into a frenzy with its potent mix of speed and danger.

The sport took root at dozens of lumber yards and wholesale dealers and they moved their product in winter months with horse-drawn timber sleighs. Some fun-loving lumberjack figured out that the large and heavy sleighs, sans horses, were a lot faster and considerably more fun when gravity took over and they slid down snow-packed hills leading to the lumber district.

Eventually, entrepreneurial sorts tweaked the sleighs by a "bob" or a cut to shorten them that rendered them into 40-foot-long sleds. The "bobsleds" looked like felled telephone poles and were essentially heavy planks of lumber with a set of runners. A second innovation came with metal steering wheels mounted fore and aft that turned the runners and steered the sleds.

The sport's name also refers to teams of two dozen or more "bobbers" who braced themselves, linked at shoulder and leg, astride the bobsled at the top of the hill. On command, they bobbed back and forth in an aggressive rocking motion to awaken their lumbering wooden beasts.

The bobbers plummeted down the steep incline with a thundering whoosh.

In the late 1880s, bobsledding was the centerpiece of Albany's Winter Carnival, which featured ice palaces, parades, fireworks and diversions to ward off cabin fever.

The Madison Avenue hill was packed with snow and hosed down the night before to ensure the icy course would be lightning fast. Men dressed in goofy costumes and came up with funny names for their race entries.

Some bobsleds were decorated with strings of colored lights, swags of evergreen, bright bunting and festive canopies.

In head-to-head challenges, the bobsledders hurtled side by side past the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception on the corner of Eagle Street. The roar of thousands of spectators who lined the hill drowned out the low rumble of runners.

They whipped past in a blur, topping speeds of 50 mph, more than a ton of hardwood and humanity, throwing a rooster tail of snow in their wake. Occasionally, if the runners hit patches of macadam, a rush of sparks shot up and the crowd yelled lustily.

The races lasted less than a minute as the sleds passed the finish line on Pearl Street and hit the flats along the Hudson River. Stopping was a problem. The only braking system was the heels of two dozen men as they dug their heavy boots into the ice. The goal was to slow the sled to a crawl before it punched into heavy snowbanks as barriers at river's edge.

Bobsledders were mostly rough-hewn lumberjacks for whom danger was commonplace. They swayed, leaned and shifted weight in order to keep the sleds upright and under control, but wipeouts, collisions and serious injuries were not unusual.

More Information If you go What: A talk on the history of bobsledding in Albany by Christopher Lindsay. When: 2-4 p.m. Saturday Where: The Fort Orange Club, 110 Washington Ave., Albany. Info.: $10 per person, includes sliders and light refreshments. See More Collapse

Accidents that maimed bobbers and spectators were duly noted in newspaper coverage.

The craze cooled after a fatality at the winter carnival. On Feb. 2, 1889, during a trial run, the "Alderman Connors" bobsled careened out of control, crashed into spectators and killed 14-year-old Charles O'Hara.

"It was a horrible tragedy and the city banned bobsledding after that," Lindsay said.

pgrondahl@timesunion.com • 518-454-5623 • @PaulGrondahl