Enjoy Events official sponsor of Romain Heinrich

 

Romain HEINRICH, Bobsleigh pilot

For those who don’t know him yet, meet Romain HEINRICH! A young man of 1m89 for 106kg, a bobsledder from Kaysersberg who will be celebrating his 28th birthday at the end of the month. What better birthday present than qualification for the Olympic Games?

Because ambition should be the watchword of every company, it was only natural to associate our company with Romain. Or vice versa, if you prefer, to associate Romain with our company.

At ENJOY EVENTS, we’ve been following the story of this athlete, who’s a childhood friend, for years. In the NIGHTOLOGIE adventure, an association in which he and we were directors, he already had this practical intelligence, this ability to stand back and this maturity. We’re not surprised by his career path – it’s just the next logical step.

We admire his willpower, strength of character, determinism and, above all, his strategic intelligence. He’s an accomplished athlete with immense maturity and an incredible ability to take a step back.

We’ve always wanted to support him. What could we do to help him concretely in his adventure? We had already taken the decision to sponsor him in 2017, and we have renewed our commitment in 2018, to accompany him on the road to the Olympics!

 

Romain Interview

So we took advantage of the fact that he’s a friend to do a little interview! Before his departure for PyeongChang, South Korea, where the next Winter Olympics will be held. Here are the answers from Romain, bobsleigh pilot for ENJOY EVENTS and for you.

You must have been looking forward to this season ! What’s your current state of mind ?

I’ve been preparing for the Olympic season for 3 years now. I’ve really used my experience from Sochi 2014 to approach this Olympiad. The mistake I could have made was to set myself in a race against the clock without living in the moment. In other words, I really concentrated on living the stages one after the other. Staying focused on what I needed to achieve on a daily basis to get there.

There’s bound to be a certain amount of pressure, sooner positive during competitions. Does it ease off between 2 competitions ? Or, do you feel constant pressure during a season like that ? How do you deal with it ?

Of course, there’s the pressure and adrenalin of competition, and you have to be able to play positively with it, to transcend yourself in the events. The higher the level, the more adrenalin I feel. I’m a competitor and I like it. But this pressure is very energy-consuming, so it’s important to only have it on race days, and for as short a time as possible. Otherwise, after two weeks, you’re done for! This is all the more true in a year like this, when the main issue was qualifying for the Olympic Games.
Bobsleigh is a high-risk sport. As a pilot, I’m responsible for the pushers who come up behind me, and I don’t want to lead them into a fall. So there’s not a day when I don’t manage my stress level, because I need it to get down. Over the last 3 years, I’ve really developed the ability to “get into it” in a matter of seconds. For me, it’s the moment when I put on my helmet and smell the foam inside. In a fraction of a second, that smell lets me know exactly what I’m doing.

What’s your training rhythm ?

During the summer, this is 100% physical training, which is frankly quantitative. Twelve to fifteen hours of sport a week, plus treatments. The aim is to develop strength, speed and explosiveness.
During the winter, I train every morning on the piste. A maximum of two or three runs, because we focus on quality. In general, it’s two hours of training, because we spend a lot of time beforehand doing visual reconnaissance on the track, and a lot of time afterwards working on the videos to correct any faults.
The afternoons are devoted to maintaining our physical condition, either by going to the gym or the athletics stadium. If we have any minor injuries or fatigue, we give priority to treatment and physiotherapy.
In general, competitions are at the end of the week, so we tend to do the big physical sessions at the beginning of the week, so as not to arrive too sore for the competitions.

During your studies, you were able to have a very flexible schedule so that you could continue training while studying, which was great. How are things now ? Are you working ? Don you take holidays during the season ?

For the 2010-2014 Olympiad, I had student status. It was quite comfortable because my university was very accommodating, and I was able to study on my own from home. So I was able to carry out both projects.
Since I started piloting in 2015, I’ve had to make a choice. Being an engineer is a job with responsibilities, and it’s complicated to free yourself from them all winter to go racing. As I really wanted to take up the challenge of becoming a racing driver, I took the daring gamble of doing just that.
From an organizational point of view, I spend my time training and managing my team. It’s like running a micro-business. I’ve discovered a very strong entrepreneurial dimension, and I need a substantial budget to acquire equipment, travel to competition sites or accompany my pushers.

Do you follow a particular diet ? A favorite dish for Bobsleigh ? A particular rituel that you only do when you’re competing ?

I’m monitored by a nutritionist and control my weight (my ideal weight is 107kg), while making sure I have no deficiencies. It’s not as restrictive as preparing for a marathon, but there are certain times of the day when you prefer one food to another.
My favorite bobsleigh dish is soup or tea. In other words, anything that will warm you up after two hours in the cold!
And my special ritual, which I only do in competition, is to drink a Redbull before the race (I never drink coffee, so that can be enough to make me feel fit), and to eat Kinder or Milka chocolate after the race. It’s not organic, it’s not vegan, it’s not glutenfree, but it sure goes down well!

What music do you listen to relax or switch off before a competition ?

Right now, just before the race, I’m listening to “Go Go Gadget – Disiz La Peste ft Orelsan”.
I start the song eight minutes before our run. And three minutes before, I put on my headphones and leave the changing room.
I don’t know why this song in particular, but it amuses and motivates me without making me tense (if I arrive too tense on the starting board, I risk being a little brusque in my piloting, which is detrimental to speed).

We asked you what you were thinking about just before you set off and pushed your bobsleigh during the 2014 Olympics ? You replied « Nothing… you’re so focused and into your thing ! »… Is it still the same now ?

Yes, it’s always the same. In fact, I think a lot about everything I have to do beforehand, and I automate a certain number of things. I see everything, analyze everything. And when it’s time to go, I clear my head.
At that moment, I’m no longer influenced by the slightest external event (unless it compromises my performance). I think every sportsman is in a similar state, but for bobsledders, it’s really tenfold.

How did you feel the first time you went down the Saint Moritz track ? Historically, because it’s the oldest bobsleigh run in the world, and because it’s carved directly into the ice. Are the sensations different ?

I was completely taken aback. I wasn’t expecting it at all. In fact, in a bobsled run there’s a fairly muffled noise generated by the concrete structure vibrating as the bobsled passes over it. This is due to the fact that the ice is not perfectly flat, as the refrigeration tubes generate tiny bumps, so the bob is always slightly weightless between two tubes and causes the structure to vibrate.

All this to say that in Saint-Moritz it’s different: the ice friction is perfect and you don’t hear those vibrations. All you hear is the wind! You can reach 150km/h on this track, so that’s a lot of wind!
In terms of driving, it’s also very different from what we’re used to. On some tracks, there are a lot of visual cues. At Saint-Moritz, the environment is very white. The piste, the surrounding snow, etc. So you see less. You steer very much by what you feel “in the stick”, i.e. the pressure the skate exerts on your fingertips. We look for just the right tension to achieve the right trajectories, and to accelerate the bob without overdoing it and breaking the glide.

What did you do in Sochi that you won’t be doing in PyeongChang ?

I’ve made a promise to myself not to turn on my cell phone on race day. There are two reasons for this: firstly, I want to live to the full the day I’ve been preparing for for 3 years. The second is that, in Sochi, I had received a lot of messages of support, and reading them before the race made me panic a bit. Even my second grade teacher sent me an e-mail to say she’d be in front of the TV! I’ll savour all this energy after the race.