Herschel Walker's Olympics attempt: the 1992 bobsled team
Herschel Walker’s Olympics experiment used to seem a lot crazier to me.
Then he went into politics and nothing about Herschel really surprises me anymore, in hindsight anyway.
***A pretty firm aside before the fun begins – we don’t cover politics here.
This isn’t cable news or incendiary political radio. It’s a Georgia Bulldogs fan site, and we don’t care what your politics happen to be.
The majority of people on this site don’t care, either. And none of the people on this site come here to read about it. You can go to your relatives’ Facebook comments for all of that.
Now, Herschel did recently receive a platform on Outkick to voice a few things. He mentioned the Olympics. This is a story about Herschel, and the Olympics. So full transparency – I’m not going to ignore the timing of that.
This is the land of the free. Go read it if you want.
Just come back here to read this article (into which I poured my soul) afterward.
Back? Never left? Now let’s take a look at Herschel Walker’s Olympics career
Herschel Walker’s Olympics career took place 30 years ago at the 1992 games in Albertville, France.
You could give me 100 tries to guess where Albertville is, and I’d use 99 of them on counties in the deep south. The 100th would be that it is a Canadian province.
So, in a way, France.
People don’t come here for my geography skills, either.
The wildest thing about Herschel’s Olympics attempt was that it wasn’t a Summer Olympics. He was so fast! Why not track? He eventually became a MMA fighter. Why not weightlifting, or wrestling?
Even diving, after a career of running back dives, would make more sense than Herschel choosing a bobsled for Team USA.
Bobsled recruiters liked his speed and strength (duh). So he momentarily traded in his Minnesota Vikings purple and gold in hopes of winning gold for the red, white and blue.
Herschel Walker is from Wrightsville, Ga. That’s in southeastern central Georgia.
His high school track at Johnson County High School was made of dirt.
If you left a bobsled in the middle of Wrightsville, even today, someone would take it to the high school and convert it into a blocking sled.
Herschel excelled at running through defenders on the football field. Olympic bobsledding was his greatest misdirection.
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“I may not have been in the sport as long as some of the other people, but I said, ‘that’s no excuse.’ I’m here at the Olympics,” Walker told CBS in a fresh tracksuit / interview with CBS.
“So as long as I’m here at the Olympics, I got a chance to be the best pusher in the world.”
Herschel’s two-man sled team didn’t medal
Herschel Walker: Olympics Star, just wasn’t meant to be. Walker obviously took it seriously, but the Heisman winner and teammate Brian Shimer finished in 7th. Switzerland’s gold medal team finished .69 of a second better.
He was replaced on the four-man sled.
″There’s no doubt I was expecting more,″ Walker said afterward. ″We came in with the attitude that we had a chance to win, and we did have a chance to win.″
Herschel went back to work in the NFL after that, and found much more success with the Eagles in 1992. He ran for 1,070 yards with 8 rushing scores, plus two scores and 278 receiving yards.
As it turned out, football came more naturally to the football player than sitting in a giant ice skate with another person in it.
But you never know if you don’t try. Herschel did, and it’s just one of many quirky moments in his professional life that make Georgia fans shrug and say, ‘That’s just Herschel.’
