Utahn keeping sledders on track

He's as good a friend as a bobsled ever had.

It started 10 years ago, when Doug Bagley didn't know a bobsled from a bobcat, but was possessed of a serious case of Olympic fever.

With the Salt Lake Winter Games of 2002 less than two years away, he read in the newspaper in the summer of 2000 about bobsled gear belonging to the U.S. team being stolen out of a rented storage unit in west Salt Lake City.

Doug got on the phone and called the national bobsled federation. He couldn't do anything about what was stolen, he told them, but he could make sure it wouldn't happen again. He offered to store their stuff — bobsleds, runners, molds, uniforms, all of it — for free.

Doug owns and manages A-1 Pioneer Moving & Storage.

Grateful for this Salt Lake reincarnation of the good Samaritan, the bobsled people, after moving their gear into his secured facility, invited Doug to the track at the new Utah Olympic Park. They gave him a ride in a bobsled, they put him front and center to watch training sessions and various races.

Doug's youngest son, John, was 13 at the time and tagged along with his dad.

John got hooked on bobsledding. Every spare minute, that's all he thought about; every free minute, that's all he did.

By the time John was 18 he was named to the U.S. national team — on his way to the Olympics.

But first he was on his way to Russia for a two-year LDS mission, which delayed things a bit. Currently, John is 22, fresh off his mission, and seriously training in an attempt to regain a spot on the national team.

Meanwhile, his dad continues to help out the bobsledders.

His latest gesture — after giving them free storage space and contributing his son's talent — is to host the mother of all bobsled parties so that the U.S. team can head to the Vancouver Olympics next month with two valuable commodities: 1) The knowledge that everyone back home is pulling for them, and 2) Enough money so they don't have to worry about that.

"We want to give them a fitting send-off," says Doug.

The event is called "Dinner With An Olympian" and is scheduled for Friday, Feb. 5, exactly one week prior to the Opening Ceremonies in Vancouver.

Doug has rented out the ballroom at Salt Lake City's five-star Grand America Hotel — where else? — and has room for well more than a thousand guests.