Technician Klaus Nowak is certain that Stefan Drescher will deliver more and more top-class performances. For the bob pilot now knows his sled and its technical refinement inside out. way he is first and foremost an analytical thinker who leaves absolutely nothing to chance. Not with the fuselage (which he can even test in the wind tunnel of an automotive manufacturer), not with the runners nor with the other fine parts of the bob. He does not try to shake the physical facts: “With a hard track with tight curve combinations I need soft elements in the bob, these lead to better results.” He knows the extensive small print of the technical regulations of the international bob organization by heart, but there is something he knows even better: the tolerances of the regulations that allow new developments. Here, so it seems, is where Nowak sees his real field of work, in the creation of new materials, the working of them and their use – over whose final details he lays a cloak of silence. With the exception of Stefan Drescher. “Stefan now knows his machine exactly. He can install steering heads, change front axles, measure prestresses, in short, he knows what material he is riding with. On the way to the world elite this is absolutely necessary. I am certain that in a few years he will be up at the top worldwide.” TOWARD THE FINISH LINE ON LEAF SPRINGS To then, the bob amateur asks himself despondently, race down the bobsleigh track on the high-grade steel chassis as if bitten by a tarantula? Bob pilots are not despondent, not Stefan Drescher, even less Susi Erdmann. “I love everything that goes fast,” she says in her happy, carefree way. “For example go-kart driving: once a year we get into the karts because it is part of our training program. I’m thrilled at how fast you can drive with them – which of course is even surpassed by the bob.” Anyone who gets into such a steel-carbon fiber shell should know that this is a high performance and racing sport. You cannot earn very much, notes world champion Erdmann. Sponsors tend to be hesitant with funding, and then in relation to that TK <strong>Magazin</strong>e | 1 | 2004 | BOBSLEIGH RACING 11 you need “gigantic” technical support with the newest and best material. “Nevertheless I still sled with the greatest enthusiasm, if possible until the year 2006, the Olympic Games in Turin." With Klaus Nowak at her side, one might add, that man who somehow stands for originality, respectability and a technical maximum. Always in search of further development, leaf springs he can bend in a cold state with a two-thousand-ton press at the company plant to avoid unfavorable changes. Thus in the end the gleaming light that on the bobsleigh track, figuratively speaking, is linked with the name Nowak, shines back on him and his company. Because he makes no secret of that either: without all the technical possibilities at Edelstahl Witten-Krefeld Nowak would not achieve the results he thinks up. If more people had the opportunity to sit in a bob themselves – the fascination about this “still” peripheral sport would grow to the greatest heights. Because one thing is certain: anyone who after one minute reaches the finish, as swift as an arrow in a high-tech vehicle, climbs out, shakes himself, gets his slightly out of joint bones back into plumb and says to himself: when does the next ride start? That is exactly what Klaus Nowak, the uncrowned “high priest of bob runners,” had predicted. He is right, absolutely right. 7
12 SPARKLERS Iron powder for golden stars By Sebastian Groß | Photos Michael Wissing