In comparison to the Summer Olympics, the Winter Olympics tends to be about the death-defying and the extreme. Perhaps no winter event encapsulates this better than the four-man bobsleigh, where teams crowd into a small sleigh to race down a narrow, twisting track, reaching speeds of up to 90 miles per hour.
Given the extreme speeds, the margins are fine in all of the sliding events. Even though athletes race down the track four times and the team with the fastest total combined time ultimately wins the gold medal, the medal places are often decided by mere hundredths of a second. The eight teams with the slowest combined times through three heats are eliminated.
For instance, in 2022, the German team of Francesco Friedrich, Thorsten Margis, Candy Bauer, and Alexander Schueller ultimately took home gold, but they were just 4.18 seconds faster across four heats than the Brazilian team of Edson Luques Bindilatti, Rafael Souza da Silva, Erick Gilson Vianna Jeronimo, and Edson Ricardo Martins, who finished last among the 20 competitors who qualified for the final heat. Germany was just 0.08 seconds away from sweeping the podium, just as it did in the two-man bobsleigh. It was the only podium sweep in the 2022 Games.
Germany is once again expected to continue its domination of the discipline next week in Cortina d’Ampezzo, as its teams have the three shortest odds of winning gold. Friedrich’s team has the third-shortest odds (+300), with Adam Ammour’s team having the second-shortest (+260), and Johannes Lochner’s team is a -185 favorite.
Below is a full list of the opening odds:
Four-Man Bobsleigh Odds on DraftKings Sportsbook
- Lochner, Fleischhauser, Wenzel, Margis (Germany): -185
- Ammour, Ammour, Schaller, Tasche (Germany): +260
- Friedrich, Straub, Sommer, Schuller (Germany): +300
- Kim, Kim, Lee, Kim (South Korea): +3500
- Hall, Cackett, Greenwood, Lawrence (Great Britain): +3500
- Treichl, Sammer, Stepan, Huber (Austria): +4000
- Follador, Rolli, Annen, Vogele (Switzerland): +6000
- Baumgartner, Bilotti, Fantazzini, Mircea (Italy): +8000
- Mandlbauer, Bertschler, Mitterer, Nichols-Bardi (Austria): +8000
- Heinrich, Hauterville, Blairon, Riou (France): +10000
- Vogt, Haas, Ndiaye, Aeberhard (Switzerland): +10000
- Kalenda, Miknis, Klava, Ungurs (Latvia): +10000
- Horn, Furnell, Powell, Vissering (United States): +15000
- Pitter, Harris, Tracey, Fearon (Jamaica): +20000
- Tentea, Pacioianu, Iordache, Dinescu (Romania): +20000
- del Duca, Niederhofer, Sosoo, Williamson (United States): +20000
- Wesselink, Franjic, Franjic, Koster (Netherlands): +20000
