Vic Emery

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Olympic medal record
Men's Bobsleigh
Gold	1964 Innsbruck	Four-Man

Vic Emery (born June 28, 1933 in Montreal, Quebec, Canada) is a businessman and an Gold medallist at the Olympic Winter Games and a World Champion bobsledder.

Involved in athletics from a young age, Emery was a graduate of the University of Western Ontario and the Harvard Business School where he earned an MBA. After attending the bobsleigh competition at the 1956 Winter Olympics in Cortina d'Ampezzo, Italy, Emery decided to give the sport a try with the idea of achieving enough competency by 1959 so as to be able to compete in the World Bobsled Championships in St. Moritz, Switzerland. He and his brother John Emery helped establish the "Laurentian Bobsleigh Association" and recruited Peter Kirby and Doug Anakin to make up a four-man bobsled team. Although Canada had no bobsled training facilities or practise track and no organizations to support or train them, Emery's team performed dry-land runs in a Montreal gymnasium and practised a few times at the Lake Placid, New York bobsleigh run built for the 1932 Winter Olympics.

Vic Emery was the driver of the four-man bobsleigh team representing Canada at the 1959 world championships where their performance was less than stellar. Given guidance and coaching by the great Italian champion Eugenio Monti, Emery and his teammates set a goal of being the first Canadian bobsleigh team to compete in the Winter Olympic Games.

At the 1964 Winter Olympics in Innsbruck, Austria, the team realized their dream but without corporate or government sponsorship had to pay their own way. Given little chance against the superior Italian team and the heavily favored Austrians, in their first run, the Canadian team astonished competitors and spectators alike by setting a track record. However, their sled's axle was damaged in the process and they would have been disqualified had not rival Eugenio Monti and his mechanics come to the rescue. Their sled was repaired and after the third of four runs the Canadian team was already far ahead of their competition and they went on to easily win the Gold medal. Emery and teammate Peter Kirby paired in the two-man bobsled competition and earned a fourth place finish.

The following year, Vic Emery's crew of Michael Young, Jerry Presley and Peter Kirby proved the Olympic victory was no fluke by winning the 1965 World bobsled championship. Emery and Michael Young finished third in the two-man event. Vic Emery gave up the sport a few years later and returned to the business world in Canada. Today, he is retired and living in London in the United Kingdom.

Vic Emery was inducted into Canada's Sports Hall of Fame in 1964 and the Canadian Olympic Hall of Fame in 1971.