Tucked into the Mount Van Hoevenberg Sports Complex outside the village of Lake Placid is a workshop run solely by Marc Van Den Berg, who spends countless hours constructing bobsleds.
Van Den Berg, the director of technology and equipment for USA Bobsled/Skeleton, constructed the bobsleds Team USA will use to compete in the 2026 Winter Olympics in Italy this week, starting on Sunday with the women’s monobob — an event where one woman races down an ice track in a bobsled with no brakeman.
Inside Marc Van Den Berg’s workshop in Mount Van Hoevenberg, where he constructs bobsleds for Team USA.
Photo courtesy of Marc Van Den Berg
“It’s very exciting,” Van Den Berg said. “Team USA has a big chance for winning medals now, because our equipment is so up to date. And it’s all built in Lake Placid.”
The bobsleds were shipped in massive containers flown from New York to Europe: two men’s two-man sleds, two men’s four-man sleds, three women’s two-man sleds and three women’s monobobs. For reference, the minimum weight of the lightest bobsled, a women’s monobob, is 357 pounds.
Van Den Berg started construction on the bobsleds two years ago and calls himself “a one-man show.”
“We didn’t want to bring them out earlier, because everybody starts copying the good stuff,” Van Den Berg said. “I don’t copy stuff. These sleds are completely different than all the other competitors.”
Van Den Berg is currently with Team USA in Italy to help set up equipment on the track at the newly constructed Cortina Sliding Centre in Cortina d’Ampezzo. If renovations to the 100-year-old sliding track at Cortina d’Ampezzo were not completed on schedule ahead of the 2026 Winter Olympics, bobsled events could have been held at the Olympic Sports Complex at Mount Van Hoevenberg, which in 2024 was named the official Plan B site for the 2026 Olympic sliding events—luge, bobsled and skeleton.
A bobsled on display in Marc Van Den Berg’s workshop in Mount Van Hoevenberg. Photo courtesy of Marc Van Den Berg
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