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“You’re out of your freaking mind,” was Hunter Powell’s response to his girlfriend’s suggestion that he try bobsledding. After competing for years in decathlon professionally (and, before that, for Colorado State University), the Fort Collins native was ready to move on from his dream of going to the Olympics. Instead, he followed the advice of his now-fiancée, Kaysha Love—the reigning 2025 Monobob World Champion—and went to a bobsled combine. He was named to the national team in late 2024.
“What makes a good decathlete, thankfully, is what makes a good bobsledder—being as strong and as fast as you possibly can,” Powell says. “And the cool part has been that I’ve come to enjoy this probably just as much, if not even more, than the decathlon.” Unlike Love, who’s a bobsled pilot, Powell is a brakeman, which means his job is to push, hop in, stay still, and, he says, “hope for dear life we don’t go upside down.”
Although the Germans have been dominant on the men’s side, Powell says the American bobsledders are inching closer: “It might be a long shot, but our goal is to walk away with a medal.” In any case, Powell is looking forward to having the experience of a lifetime with the person he’s choosing to spend his life with. “The fact that I get to travel the world chasing one of my dreams and get to do it the entire time with the person I love?” Powell says. “It doesn’t get any cooler than that.”
In advance of his trip to Italy—and his expected Olympic runs on February 21 and 22 in the four-man bobsled event—we chatted with Powell about his transition to bobsledding, what it’s like to fly down the track, and, between him and Love, who’s most likely to bring home hardware.
Editor’s note: The following conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
5280: Today, I’m catching you in St. Moritz, Switzerland. But where is home when you aren’t on the road?
Hunter Powell: I’m originally from Fort Collins; right now, that’s still my address. My lady’s from Salt Lake, so we might move out there in the next couple of years, just because that’s where her family’s at and that’s where we train.
How does one get into bobsledding?
My lady was the one that got me into it. Kaysha got recruited right out of track. I continued doing track post-college, you know, as professionally as you can do track without being on a Nike contract or something like that. I kept on track for the next six years after I got done with college, and I finally got done with my last season in 2022 or 2023. Kaysha was telling me, “You know, you really ought to try for bobsled, I think you’d be really, really good at it. You’re super strong, really fast; decathletes usually make good bobsledders.” At the time, I was like, “I just got done doing this whole other sport that doesn’t pay money. I’ve been training 30 hours a week for the last 10 years.” But she talked me into doing a little combine in Salt Lake. I ended up being the best-performing guy there.
What are the different roles for bobsled teams?
You have one of two jobs: You’re the guy that’s driving or you’re a guy that’s pushing. Obviously, the pilot pushes as well, but if you’re a push athlete, you’re typically referred to as a brakeman. For the most part, there’s not a whole lot of active things for [brakemen] to do once we get in the sled. Our job is really trying to be as still and as low as possible. You’ve got to know where you’re at in the track, because you’ve kind of got to brace. You’re not trying to lean, but you’re trying to brace for certain curves, because some will just throw you side to side.
As we’re going down the track, you’re just trying to slowly sink lower and lower and lower. You’re trying to be firm, but not rigid. In bobsled, we say “loose is fast.” The looser that you can be in the sled, and the looser that the sled is itself, the more it’s going to naturally want to find the path of least resistance. But you also want to be firm enough. You don’t want to be like a water bed going down there, where if you hit a wall, all your weight is trying to flip the sled.
After not making the Olympics in the decathlon, does this feel like a second chance?
Part of the hard part about sports, and about chasing dreams in general, is that to achieve the dream, you need to have a little bit of luck. You can do everything that you’re supposed to do, do all of your training, have the athletic ability—but sometimes, you’re just not lucky, you know? I look at my later years, after college, when I was trying to make the Games, and I don’t know if I could have competed. I believe I could have, but I never got the chance to find out, just because things would happen; injuries or losing coaches. So yeah, this has really just been a second chance at the dream.
You’ve mentioned your fiancée, monobob champion and fellow Team USA Olympian Kaysha Love, a few times. Who’s better?
At what?
Let’s start with bobsledding.
Oh, Kaysha is. I would never tell that to her face; she’d rub it in, tell you how she pushes faster than me too. She really is a generational talent. In her second year of being a full-time pilot, she became a world champion. Nobody has ever done that in the history of the sport. She’s expected to be a contender for a medal at the Games. So yeah, I mean, I like to think I’m pretty decent, amongst the men’s team. But she’s special.
How excited are you to be going to Italy together?
It’s about as cool as it gets—getting to chase a dream and achieve it with the person you love. Even though we’re not making any damn money, even though we’re not working or all these things, the fact that I get to be a semi-professional athlete, and get to do it all the entire time with the person I love and want to spend my life with—it’s very special.
What are your goals as a competitor, going into these Games?
It’s tough, just because the Germans have been so dominant on the men’s side for the last few years. But both of our men’s team pilots have been getting closer and closer and closer and closer. And at this point, we’re starting to out-push the Germans, which means that we’re getting a good enough start at the beginning of the race to at least be able to hang with them. Then it’s just like, can we keep it clean enough to be able to keep up with them at the bottom?
