Carsten Vissering, Former Northwestern Diver Finish in Top 20 of Olympic Bobsled
Former USC swimmer Carsten Vissering made his Olympic debut on Saturday and finished 11th in the men’s four-man bobsled Sunday at the Milan Cortina Olympics.
Vissering, a Pac-12 champion in breaststroke and an NCAA relay champion, was the brakeman for the sled of American Kristopher Horn. They finished 11th out of 25 starters in the four-man bobsled in the final two days of competition at the Cortina Sliding Center in Cortina d’Ampezzo.
Horn’s squad was eighth after the first run and 11th in the second run. But a rough third run that was just 17th left them unable to push into the top 10. In the fourth run on Sunday, the final day of the Games, they had the 14th-fastet run to land 11th.
Vissering’s sled – with fellow push athletes Caleb Furnell and Hunter Powell – finished .12 seconds ahead of the second American sled, piloted by Frank Del Duca. They were 2.37 seconds behind the winning German sled of Johannes Lochner.
Del Duca, the American male flagbearer at the Opening Ceremony, finished fourth with Joshua Williamson in two-man bobsled, .44 off the medal stand. Vissering and Horn had hoped to compete in two-man bobsled, but a last-minute appeal was denied. Horn competed in four two-man races on the World Cup scheduled this season, with five required to compete in the Olympics.
Vissering fielded plenty of congratulations on his Olympic performance, among them from former Nation’s Capital Aquatic Club teammate Katie Ledecky on social media.
Vissering isn’t the only former aquatic athlete on the track this weekend: Canada’s Yohan Eskrick-Parkinson is a former diver at Northwestern and international diver for Jamaica who has transitioned to being a push athlete for the country of his birth.
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The native of Calgary was part of the four-man sled piloted by Jay Dearborn. The squad finished 20th out of 27 starters, the last sled to make the cut for a fourth and final run. They finished second among two Canadian sleds, but they did dodge three major crashes on a crazy second run on Saturday.
Eskrick-Parkinson dove at Northwestern from 2018-22. He finished seventh in the 1-meter and seventh in the 3-meter at the 2020 Big Ten Championships, then eighth in the 1-meter the following year. He also competed internationally for Jamaica.
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He teamed with Yona Knight-Wisdom, born and raised in Great Britain, to form Jamaica’s first international synchronized diving pairing. They finished 14th (out of 27 squads) in men’s 3-meter synchro at the 2023 World Championships in Fukuoka, Japan, and 13th out of 27 at the 2024 World Championships in Doha, Qatar.
He was 18th on 1-meter, 14th on 3-meter and fifth in synchro at the 2023 Pan American Games. (Knight-Wisdom was a silver medalist at the 2019 Pan Am Games on 1-meter.)
After falling short of qualification for the 2024 Paris Olympics, he retired from diving, when he began pursuing a push athlete career in bobsled. He was used to Canada’s sporting infrastructure, training with Dive Calgary on the national scene as a junior from age 11 on. He still coaches diving on the side as a way to support himself.