Jason Kelce and Colin Jost Call Bobsledding the Scariest Experience of Their Lives
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What happens when a 280-pound former NFL lineman and a comedian best known for anchoring “Weekend Update” strap into a bobsled and hurtle down an icy track at more than 80 miles per hour?
Sheer, unfiltered terror.
That was the consensus from Jason Kelce and Colin Jost, who each documented their first bobsled experiences ahead of the 2026 Winter Olympics.
The two celebrities took on one of winter sports’ most intense disciplines in separate outings with Team USA. And neither held back in describing just how punishing the ride turned out to be.
Jason Kelce’s Full-Speed Introduction to Bobsled
Former NFL champion Jason Kelce, 38, trained with the USA Bobsled Team in Park City, Utah earlier this year. The footage was released on YouTube on Feb. 15.
He didn’t just hop into the sled and go. According to the video’s description, the team put him through a rigorous evaluation first.
“The team put me through a full combine — 30-meter sprint, vertical jump, broad jump — then taught me how to push on the dry-land training track before suiting up and going down the actual ice track at 80+ mph pulling 5 Gs,” he wrote in the video’s description.
But it was the ride itself that left the biggest impression. In a comment on Instagram, Kelce described his experience in vivid, unflinching detail:
“For those of you wondering what it feels like to Bobsled, these were my internal thoughts going down the track: I thought this would be like a fun roller coaster, but man was I wrong,” he wrote.
“It started out quiet and smooth, but as we continued to pick up speed the intensity got higher and higher. The turns bounced my shoulders and head like I was back on a football field, the noise of the sled got louder and louder, rattling as if the whole thing was falling apart,” he added.
Kelce went on to describe topping out at 84 miles per hour by the eighth turn.
“By then, my 280 pound body was being multiplied by 5 Gs and it felt like 1400 lbs was pushing me into the bottom of the sled, It’s metal rails I was sitting on bruising my hips,” he wrote.
“At that point, it was so loud I could no longer hear my own screams, which I’m not sure I was even producing because the air had been squeezed out of my body. Just as I wondered how much more of it I could take, I heard the relieving sound of the brakes,” he concluded.
For a man who spent years absorbing hits from some of the biggest, fastest athletes on the planet in the NFL, comparing bobsledding to being back on the football field speaks volumes about the forces involved in the sport.
Jost’s Brush With What He Called Pure Terror
Saturday Night Live cast member Colin Jost, 43, who is serving as an NBC correspondent for the 2026 Winter Olympics, had his own harrowing introduction to the sport while in Lake Placid, N.Y. earlier this year.
In an interview with Mike Tirico on Feb. 16, Jost held nothing back.
“I went down the bobsled, I went from start point one at the top with a very gifted driver, thankfully, Bryan Berghorn,” Jost said of one of Team USA’s coaches.
“And I was not prepared for the level of terror of this bobsled. I swear to God, I thought I was going to die.”
He continued, painting an even more dramatic picture of the physical toll: “I thought my back was going to snap in half, I thought my bones were going to fly off my body and be littered all up and down the bobsled track. It was by far the scariest experience I’ve ever had in my life.”
Coming from someone who routinely performs live comedy in front of millions of television viewers on Saturday nights, calling bobsledding “by far the scariest experience” of his life underscores just how intense the sport really is.
What Exactly Is Bobsledding?
For viewers tuning in to the Winter Olympics and wondering what all the fuss is about, bobsleigh — or bobsled — is a winter sport in which individual athletes or teams of 2 to 4 athletes (or a single woman in monobob) make timed speed runs down narrow, twisting, banked, iced tracks in a gravity-powered sleigh.
The sport has a long and storied Olympic history.
The first recorded bobsled competition was held in Switzerland, in 1898, in St. Moritz, according to NBC News. It made its Olympic debut at the inaugural Winter Games in Chamonix, France, in 1924.
At Milano Cortina 2026, there will be four bobsleigh events: 2-man bobsleigh, 4-man bobsleigh, 2-woman bobsleigh and women’s monobob, according to the Olympics official site.
Team USA Already Making Its Mark on the Ice
American bobsled athletes have already delivered results at the 2026 Winter Olympics.
So far, the USA has won a gold (Elana Meyers Taylor) and bronze (Kaillie Armbruster Humphries) medal in the Women’s Monobob Bobsleigh. The final took place on Feb. 16, per ESPN.
More bobsled action is still to come.
The men’s two-man final takes place on Feb. 17. The women’s two-man concludes on Feb. 21. The men’s four-man finishes on Feb. 22.
Fans can catch the action live on NBC or stream it on NBC’s Peacock.