Two Wyoming Bobsledders. Two Horrific Brain Injuries. One Survivor.
The New York Times
Travis Bell and Joe Sisson were close friends and rising stars in bobsled before crashes derailed their careers. Two decades later, one of them wonders why he thrived and his friend is gone.
MORGAN, Utah — The weeks before a Winter Olympics are always tough for Joe Sisson. It’s when he thinks most about the dream he wanted so badly, to drive a bobsled in the ultimate competition. It’s gone, and so is the friend who helped him chase it.
Sisson knows how much worse it could have been, how fortunate he is to walk the sideline at high school football games, hustling players on and off the field, nearly two decades after flipping the bobsled he was driving at 80 miles per hour down the ice in St. Moritz, Switzerland.
He does not understand why he struggles only with a quadrennial melancholy and some attention difficulties while so many of his friends from the sport battle depression and addiction or memory loss. Three of them have died by suicide, including his mentor and big brother in the sport, Travis Bell, another athlete from the vast and tiny state of Wyoming who is often on his mind.
