Most would-be Olympic bobsledders have state-of-the-art facilities in which to train and perfect their craft. Ben Weber has the deserts of Afghanistan.
As Yahoo Sports reports, Weber, a Team USA bobsledder, moonlights as a green beret stationed in Afghanistan, and trains by pushing military vehicles at odd hours in the morning. His teammates call him “a beast.”
Weber’s been in the Special Forces for seven years, and besides Afghanistan, has done tours in Niger, Cameroon, and Iraq. After next year’s Winter Olympics in PyeongChang, South Korea, Weber will remain on active duty. “I’m not concerned about it,” he told Yahoo Sports about the Olympics being in a potential powder keg of a country. “The Olympics are a time where I think everyone does the right thing and they put animosity about politics aside. It would be a brazen move [for North Korea] to do anything while they have their own athletes there. So I’m going to keep focused on competing and winning while we’re over there.”
How’d he get the idea to pick up bobsledding? He was visiting a friend at Fort Bragg, when he read a magazine article about gold-medal Olympic bobsledder Justin Olsen—on the can.
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