When Manteo Mitchell got a tattoo of the Olympic rings after the 2012 London Games, he chose a spot a few inches above his left ankle.
That was where his fibula broke in the middle of his preliminary round leg of the men’s 4x400m relay in 2012.
Mitchell gutted out his lap with the baton, the U.S. advanced and his teammates placed second in the final to the Bahamas.
“I actually felt it and heard it, which is crazy, because I guess everything just blacked out to me, and it was just me in that moment,” Mitchell, who had bruised his left leg tripping on stairs in the athletes’ village three days earlier, says now.
Mitchell didn’t know that preliminary round runners also receive medals. So he was surprised to later unpack a silver medal from a black box while on a therapy table in August 2012.
A month later, the Olympic and Paralympic teams visited the White House. President Barack Obama named Mitchell in his speech, calling him one of his favorite stories of the Games.
Then when Mitchell shared his new tattoo on Instagram, he wrote, “Got my rings! Now time to get more medals!!!!”
Mitchell looks likely to get that chance, though it will have taken 14 years. He is hopeful to return to the Olympics in 2026 — for the first time since 2012 — but it won’t be on the track.
He has become the latest successful convert from track and field to bobsled.
Mitchell was the push athlete in the top U.S. men’s bobsled at last winter’s world championships. Driver Frank Del Duca and Mitchell were fifth in the two-man event, the best U.S. finish since 2013.
It’s likely that the U.S. will qualify to send six push athletes to the Milan-Cortina 2026 Games for two- and four-man races. The team is expected to be named in late 2025 or early 2026.
Mitchell can become the 12th American to compete in both the Summer Olympics and Winter Olympics. Three have already done so in track and field and bobsled: Willie Davenport, Lauryn Williams and Lolo Jones.
Mitchell was celebrating his 33rd birthday in July 2020 when he received a phone call from USA Bobsled CEO Aron McGuire. McGuire, previously an associate director at USA Track and Field for eight years, was looking for the next sprint-to-bobsled recruit.
Mitchell knew about the sport from “Cool Runnings,” and that his 2012 Olympic track teammates Williams and Jones already made the switch.
He even remembers meeting 2010 Olympic gold medalist driver Steven Holcomb while both worked out at East Tennessee State University in 2014. Holcomb had invited him to take a ride in a bobsled some time, but Mitchell was still focused on track back then.
The call from McGuire came at the right time. Mitchell, after injuring his Achilles in a serious car accident in late 2016, last ran internationally in 2017. By 2020, he was on the fence about retiring from sprinting.
“I’ve never been one to shy away from a challenge,” he said of the bobsled offer. “It was just a new opportunity, a way to extend my career.”
His first bobsled runs came later in 2020. Mitchell made his competition debut in 2021 and reached the sport’s premier circuit, the World Cup, in late 2022.
“I had to change my body type,” said Mitchell, who weighed about 180 pounds as a sprinter and bulked up to 220 for bobsled. “I had to change the way I lifted, the way I ate and all these different things that most people probably wouldn’t really think about. Because in track and field, you just show up, you just run and you run fast, you make a team or you don’t. But in bobsled, there’s so much more housed within all of that itself. So I did all the small things that I needed to do.”
Earlier this month, he performed well in the USA Bobsled preseason push championships. The team for upcoming World Cups will be named after trials races in early November.
Mitchell also hopes to compete at a home world championships in Lake Placid, New York, in March. It could be the first time his children — son Khi, who turns 13 next month, and daughter Melody, 1 — see him compete in person in his new sport.
“One thing I think that he’s really brought to the table this last year or two is he’s gotten more comfortable behind the sled in a leadership role,” USA Bobsled head coach Chris Fogt said after push championships. “He’s been much more outspoken. He’s been a great leader on the team. So it’s definitely increased his stock as a push athlete. So I foresee him getting a lot of opportunities this year with our top-ranked sled.”
When Mitchell chose that tattoo after the 2012 Games, he purposely had the Olympic rings connected but, if you look closely, also broken.
“To complement finishing the task, even while broken,” he said. Mitchell later added a second, larger and connected set of Olympic rings in color on the same leg.
He has made about 400 public appearances and speaking engagements to tell his story since that relay leg. His message can be summed up by a three-word tattoo inside his right arm: Faith, focus, finish.
The mantra — which Mitchell used in at least one interview after that relay — was inspired by 2 Timothy 4:7: I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.
“This is my legacy,” Mitchell reportedly said that day in London.
Now, at least in the Olympic sense, Mitchell can add to it.
“It’s all about writing your own story,” he said, “and finishing on your own terms.”
Americans to compete in Summer and Winter Olympics
Eddy Alvarez
Short Track Speed Skating: 2014 (silver, 5000m relay)
Baseball: 2020 (silver)
“Eddy the Jet” is believed to be the only U.S. Winter Olympian to become a Major League Baseball player. He also was an Opening Ceremony flag bearer along with Sue Bird at the Tokyo Games.
Connie Carpenter-Phinney
Speed Skating: 1972
Road Cycling: 1984 (gold, road race)
Made Olympic debut at age 14 at the Winter Games, then became the first woman to win an Olympic cycling gold medal 12 years later. Husband Davis and son Taylor also cycled at the Olympics.
Willie Davenport
Track and Field: 1964, 1968 (gold, 110m hurdles), 1972, 1976 (bronze, 110m hurdles)
Bobsled: 1980
At the 1980 Lake Placid Games, Davenport and fellow bobsledder Jeff Gadley became the first Black men to compete on a U.S. Winter Olympic team. They were both push athletes in driver Bob Hickey‘s 12th-place, four-man bobsled. Davenport and Gadley, a decathlete, were pioneers in the track-to-bobsled movement. Davenport died in 2002.
Eddie Eagen
Boxing: 1920 (gold), 1924
Bobsled: 1932 (gold, four-man)
The first American to compete in the Summer and Winter Games and the only person from any nation to win a gold medal in a Winter Olympic sport and a Summer Olympic sport. Also became a Rhodes scholar in between winning his golds.
David Gilman
Canoe: 1976, 1984
Luge: 1984
Lolo Jones
Track and Field: 2008, 2012
Bobsled: 2014
Led the 2008 Olympic 100m hurdles final until clipping the ninth of 10 hurdles. Finished fourth in the 2012 Olympic 100m hurdles. Then Jones gave bobsled a try with some recruiting from driver Elana Meyers Taylor. Jones was 10th at the Sochi Games as a push athlete and has continued training and competing in both sports, off and on, for the last decade.
Art Longsjo
Speed Skating: 1956
Track Cycling: 1956
The first American to compete in the Winter and Summer Olympics in the same year.
Connie Paraskevin-Young
Speed Skating: 1984
Track Cycling: 1988 (bronze, sprint), 1992, 1996
Arnold Uhrlass
Speed Skating: 1960
Track Cycling: 1964
Lauryn Williams
Track and Field: 2004 (100m silver), 2008, 2012 (4x100m gold)
Bobsled: 2014 (two-woman silver)
Once the world’s fastest woman (2005 World 100m champion), Williams converted to bobsled at the suggestion of Lolo Jones at an airport en route to a summer 2013 track and field meet. She made the Olympic team about six months later and won a medal at the Sochi Games, pushing Elana Meyers Taylor’s sled.
Chris Witty
Speed Skating: 1994, 1998 (silver, 1000m; bronze, 1500m), 2002 (gold, 1000m), 2006
Track Cycling: 2000
Also was the U.S. flag bearer at the Opening Ceremony of the last Olympics held in Italy in Torino in 2006.
Other U.S. track and field Olympians tried bobsled without making an Olympic team. That list includes Edwin Moses (1976 and 1984 Olympic 400m hurdles gold medalist) and Tianna Madison (2016 Olympic long jump champion and two-time 4x100m relay gold medalist).
Jeff Gadley, Willie Davenport changed bobsled as Winter Olympic pioneers
Jeff Gadley and Willie Davenport became the first Black men to compete on a U.S. Winter Olympic team in 1980.
