AmeriServ Presents: Bank Chats

The Price of Gold: Dan Barefoot

• AmeriServ Financial, Inc. • Episode 24

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Competing in the Olympics is a dream many athletes strive to reach, but at what cost? On this episode of Bank Chats, Drew and Jeff sit down with Team USA Skeleton slider, Dan Barefoot, to chat about the sport, his journey, and what it takes physically, mentally, and financially, to pursue a dream in the sport of Skeleton. Dan's story is one you want to hear!

Resources:
projectpushtogoldfund.org
Barefoot on Ice

Credits:
An AmeriServ Financial, Inc. Production
Music by Rattlesnake, Millo, and Andrey Kalitkin
Hosted by Drew Thomas and Jeff Matevish

Thanks for listening! You can find out more about AmeriServ by visiting ameriserv.com. You can also find us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.

DISCLAIMER
This podcast focuses on having valuable conversations on various topics related to banking and financial health. The podcast is grounded in having open conversations with professionals and experts, with the goal of helping to take some of the mystery out of financial and related topics; as learning about financial products and services can help you make more informed financial decisions. Please keep in mind that the information contained within this podcast, and any resources available for download from our website or other resources relating to Bank Chats is not intended, and should not be understood or interpreted to be, financial advice. The hosts, guests, and production staff of Bank Chats expressly recommend that you seek advice from a trusted financial professional before making financial decisions. The hosts of Bank Chats are not attorneys, accountants, or financial advisors, and the program is simply intended as one source of information. The podcast is not a substitute for a financial professional who is aware of the facts and circumstances of your individual situation. AmeriServ Presents: Bank Chats is produced and distributed by AmeriServ Financial, Incorporated.

Drew Thomas:

Fast fact, being an Olympic level skeleton slider is not only demanding physically, but economically. A single season can cost as much as $50,000 with little to no federal funding for U.S. athletes. I'm Drew Thomas, and you're listening to Bank Chats. Yeah. So, I wanted to start the conversation with you just using a question that you're probably not going to be expecting.

Jeff Matevish:

Okay.

Drew Thomas:

So, how many siblings do you have?

Jeff Matevish:

I have one.

Drew Thomas:

You have one sibling. Yeah. Okay, so you're, so would your parents say, honestly, that, like, what would what would they say if I said to them, who's your favorite child?

Jeff Matevish:

Well, obviously me.

Drew Thomas:

Would, would they say that, though, or would they...

Jeff Matevish:

So, if my sister wasn't in the room, yes, okay, but if she was in the room, I think they'd leave the room.

Drew Thomas:

Okay, so, yeah, so, so they wouldn't said, they wouldn't say the whole like, you know, oh, all my, I love my children, all equally. Would they like...

Jeff Matevish:

Oh, they probably would say that. Yeah, you're

Drew Thomas:

I think a lot of parents do, yeah, and I the right. reason that I say this because I said this was unconventional. The reason I say this is because I don't have multiple children, but I do feel sometimes, whenever we talk about these discussions and episodes, that, you know, I love all my children equally. But I think today is going to be kind of cool, because we have a guest that is really above and beyond what we normally have with us.

Jeff Matevish:

Yes, we did.

Drew Thomas:

So, so today we actually have a person that is really making me reconsider my diet.

Jeff Matevish:

Well, and he makes me feel like my life is pretty, like, meaningless.

Drew Thomas:

So. So today we have with us, we have, we have Dan Barefoot with us, and Dan Barefoot is a member of the U.S., U.S., it's a U.S. skeleton team, correct? What's the official like moniker is that it?

Dan Barefoot:

USA bobsled and skeleton.

Drew Thomas:

Okay, so you do both bobsled and...

Dan Barefoot:

Nope, I just do skeleton. Okay, we're under the same NGB, national governing body, sort of umbrella.

Drew Thomas:

Okay, alright, so for those people that have never watched the Olympics or watch it, explain just briefly what skeleton is, because it's something that I don't think I would do. Yeah.

Dan Barefoot:

So, there's a mile long ice tunnel track, basically, and we slide head-first down on our chests and our stomachs. You might see, you know, think of the movie Cool Runnings, which, okay, the bobsled sort of version. Yeah, luge is the feet first version. But, yeah, we're the head first of that. And we go about, you know, 80-85, miles an hour.

Drew Thomas:

Yeah, that's, I mean, that's really cool, and it sounds fun in theory, but then I don't think I would, I think if once I got up to about 40 miles an hour, I'd be like, no I need to stop.

Jeff Matevish:

Oh, no, not even 40 miles an hour, no. There's no padding or anything like that. I mean, like, you, you, you hit something, you crumple head to feet, not feet to head right?

Dan Barefoot:

If you could ever hit head first, probably. And I don't want to think of it well, yeah, yeah, thanks for that picture. Yeah.

Drew Thomas:

Don't discourage him.

Jeff Matevish:

I'm not, no, no.

Dan Barefoot:

The hits for sure, when they come from the side in, a lot of people do wear padding out, you know. Okay, I'm eight years in, and I'll still throw, you know, a piece of foam in there if I'm going to a new track. Because when you grab one of those walls going that fast, it doesn't feel good.

Jeff Matevish:

I'm sure.

Drew Thomas:

Yeah, how do they, so, I've always been curious about this. How do they keep those tracks slick? Like, how do they keep the, because the ice goes all the way up the wall, right? So, how did they, I'm assuming I'm guessing they only exist in places where they can keep it cold enough, is that

Dan Barefoot:

They should, okay? We're noticing, as the right? weather, you know, starts to get a little weird these past five years, that, you know, some of the tracks, they have to refrigerate extra. And it's, it's an artificial refrigeration. The tracks are concrete tracks that are sort of, I don't know, four or five feet off the ground, okay. And the refrigeration pipes kind of go underneath, and they're run by ammonia or something like that. I don't, I'm not, yeah, well, still, yeah, yeah. But yeah, they spray it with a hose, like, you know, they change the nozzle however they need to lay down the ice, and they just walk down, up and down, this mile long track. Track crew at every track are phenomenal, honestly, without them, the sport doesn't exist. So, you know, we kind of have to, yeah, give them the credit.

Drew Thomas:

is it kind of like ice hockey, where the zamboni has to come out and like, because eventually you would think it, with enough people going down that track, you'd end up with with ridges and things in the ice. So, correct, do they have to, how often do they like resurface it between every racer?

Dan Barefoot:

Unfortunately no, that would be amazing. Yeah, no, it's and I would they don't have a zamboni machine either. It's when people do it, it's literally by hand. Wow. They'll walk down either with, you know, scrapers or a bucket of slush. And they'll, like, patch in, you know, gouges, if a bobsled, you know, because usually it's bobsled that kind of makes the bigger, okay, marks. Yeah, they, they call it a spritz. So, it'll give you, like a fresh, a fresh sheet of ice before the race, and then after that first heat, they'll spritz it again for the second heat. Okay, everybody within each heat gets whatever ice they get. Wow.

Jeff Matevish:

Is it better to have a fresh track, like in a heat, do you want to be first or last?

Dan Barefoot:

Generally first. Okay, yeah. Saint Moritz is sort of the only outlier where it's better to be a little bit later, okay, because that race usually starts super early. It's not an artificial refrigerator track. It's, it's built in the ground with snow blocks, like an igloo. Oh, wow. It's amazing. It's an insane thing. But it's not artificially refrigerated. And so you got to start the race early, right? Yeah, because you don't want to show up and like, oh, it's getting a little soft. So, because you start early, you also have a little bit of a frosty surface. You don't really think about it. When you open your freezer, there's kind of a little bit of a film most of the time. Oh, yeah. And that's basically what happens to the track even more so. And so, but as the day goes on a little bit, you know, maybe halfway through that field, the sun starts to hit or the air warms, then it sort of naturally spritzes itself, okay, but every other track versus, I mean, you throw it on times if you go first, huh?

Drew Thomas:

Yeah, that's pretty cool. Yeah. So, for those of you that are regular viewers, slash listeners, you may be wondering why we're doing, why we're having this conversation, because it seems on the surface, have nothing to do with finance, but or banking, or money, or whatever. But I, we were kind of talking with Dan and just sort of talking about how you got involved in doing this sport, and all the challenges that you have, not only from the athletic side of the sport, but also just being able to live and eat and travel and all those you know, it's not a typical thing where you can have a, a normal nine-to-five, Monday through Friday job, right? So, yeah. So, how did you get started with, with doing the sport? Because it seems like a sport that would not be easy to just sort of like stumble into.

Jeff Matevish:

It wouldn't be my first pick. Yeah. I mean.

Drew Thomas:

Most, most people were like, oh, I want to play basketball, yeah.

Jeff Matevish:

Or even, you know, skiing or snowboarding for

Drew Thomas:

So, how did you get involved? winter sports, but, you know, yeah, so..

Dan Barefoot:

Well, I went to Penn State for my degree, and once I graduated, I moved out east for my first, you know, career job in Westchester, Pennsylvania. And nothing against, you know, the working world, but it's to me, a lot easier than college was. College was hard. And even with how difficult it was, I still did club sports. I, you know, fly fished as much as I could on the weekends. I was just, I was always doing something. And then now I went to this job, and kind of clocked in, clocked out. I went to the gym afterwards, and by the time I got home, I'm like, what else do I do? You know, I was genuinely, like, bored, and I'm like, I need to figure out, so I started Googling things. And you know, it was winter at the time, but I'm still like, you know, flag football leagues? No, you know, maybe try to get back into baseball, but because it was winter, I'm like, you know what's, what's a winter sport I can do? And what do you know? You know, Olympic, a list of a Winter Olympic sports pops up. And I was like, whoa, whoa. Yeah, I wasn't thinking about this. But, you know, out of curiosity, bobsled is alphabetically, so thank you for bobsled, for being a "B", because I didn't want to do bobsled necessarily, you know, I ended up clicking that link, and they said, you know, you can try out. There's seven, eight tryouts across the country, different cities. Wow, I'm going to train for this and see what happens.

Drew Thomas:

So, do they, so when you go to try out for something like this, you said it was like open tryouts. Yeah. So, I would imagine the equipment and so forth is pretty specific. Do they give you, like, a rental sled and then say, all right, see how you do, or is that pretty much what it is?

Dan Barefoot:

Absolutely. And then you, you kind of start from halfway up the track. They kick you down, and they, you know, good luck. Some people really like it. Some people will do, like, absolutely, not. You're doing only 30 miles an hour, and they're saying no at 30 miles an hour, then they made the right choice. You know, because they wouldn't have liked it after that, yeah, but yeah. And I, you know, you brought up the money thing, and I was sort of internally crying, because if I knew, honestly, if I knew what it would have cost of getting

Jeff Matevish:

Well, what is the cost of getting into a sport in, I don't think I would have done it. Yeah? So, I, I'm kind of happy in a way that I didn't know, but at the same time, I wish I knew, yeah. like this? Yeah, for competition, versus doing it as a hobby?

Dan Barefoot:

Yeah so, it really is the traveling, because, you know, your flights, your rental cars, your hotels, you're never in the same place, so you're buying a week's worth of food, leaving, going to the next place, going to the next place. Yeah, it was a lot of, of the movement, moving around that costs a lot, and a lot of these tracks aren't in cheap places. Yeah, there's some are resorts, you know. So, you do your best you can to not spend a lot. But like in the beginning, you might only spend $5,000 for a year, but then, as you get you know, better and better, and you're traveling every week, yeah, World Cup, you know, you're spending $35,000-$40,000 just to do the traveling. You know, it's like, that's not even going above and beyond.

Drew Thomas:

Yeah, so, and I'm sure, I'm guessing, the equipment and things like that are a cost too. Now, do you wear, like, like, you have, like, a, like, a suit, like, it's like, a tracksuit, or whatever, right? And helmet, and so forth, is that all yours? Or does Team USA supply any of that stuff? Or, how does that work?

Dan Barefoot:

Both. Okay, yeah, so the USA BS speed suits that they give us as part of our sort of membership fee. They cost more than the membership fee, to be fair. They're like $1,300 suits. Wow. And you know, our membership fee is like $250 but, yeah, they give us a suit, the helmets we buy ourselves. Sorry, the helmets we buy ourselves, the helmets skeleton athletes really hold kind of near and dear, you know, like, if we're gonna put sponsors, it's at least in the U.S., we'll put sponsors on suits. We'll put sponsors on our sleds. It's like the helmet, you know, I want to paint the way that I want to paint it, yeah? But yeah, we kind of, it's sort of a team, teamwork thing to kind of come up with everything that you need to find, because it's not always as easily available.

Jeff Matevish:

Yeah, because it's a niche sport, yeah.

Drew Thomas:

I would imagine you can't walk into Dunham's and buy a speed suit like that's just not something you can do, or Dick's Sporting Goods or something, right? So, you said that it started, you start out, sort of, you said, maybe, what about five, $5,000 a year or something like that you were, but that's because you're only, you said you're only doing a few, a few races a year. Is that? Yes. So, so at your level, how many times a year do you race?

Dan Barefoot:

So, on the World Cup, we have eight races, but every single one of them is in a different city slash country. Okay, okay, that's kind of what makes it tough. And then, you know, you try to do your best on some off weeks, to also go to a different track to train, because, hey, that next race is going to be here, or in two weeks, it's going to be here. So, if I have a week that I can go there, I'm just going to bite the bullet and do it, you know, to up my odds for when we come back. Because it really is a sport of just doing it, yeah, the more you do it, the better you get at it.

Jeff Matevish:

If you're you have an off week, you're not talking about, oh, I'm gonna go to the town over to train. You're going, you're leaving the country to train. So, that's where you're cost is a lot of it too. You're not doing, how many, how many tracks are there in the United States?

Dan Barefoot:

There are two in the U.S. One in Lake Placid, New York, one in Park City, Utah, which is right outside of Salt Lake City. Okay, there were two in Canada. There's now one. Unfortunately, the Calgary track was where the Jamaican bobsled team got famous for their Olympics up there. But then Whistler is outside of Vancouver, that was the other. So, we have three or four in North America.

Jeff Matevish:

Okay, so you traveling out of the country a lot.

Dan Barefoot:

Yeah, the others, there's 14 others, okay, and they're out, you know, over there.

Drew Thomas:

Wow. So, do you, I know you said about the, you know, the cost of the travel and so forth. Do you have to pay to enter each race then, or is, like, is there a fee for that kind of stuff? Because, like, I would think they have to maintain these tracks and, like, do the maintenance and stuff so I would imagine, if they're holding an event there, they're not doing it for free, right?

Jeff Matevish:

Yeah, that. And are you, I mean, do you win monetary prizes or anything for these races, at least, to help cover a little bit of that?

Dan Barefoot:

I have some good stories for the prize side. But to go back to your question, we pay race fees. They're honestly not much. It's like 30 euros. You know, $35-$40 US dollars to do a race, but the cost of the sliding usually comes from training. So, if you're going to a track, like I said, to train on, you're paying $40, $50 per run. Oh, wow, yeah. And if in a run, and if in a season, I'm shooting for, you

Drew Thomas:

So, but, but forget my question, answer the fun one. know, 150-200 runs, you know, pretty quickly, all of a sudden, that's a big chunk, wow, yeah, yeah.

Dan Barefoot:

So I, I have a lot of friends at other countries, which is really cool. That is cool, and you sort of, you know, after griping enough, you kind of figure out, you know, why everybody else is doing it. You know, what they sort of do outside of the sport. How much money they get for doing the sport. What they get maybe, for winning. Yeah, and it might have been an unfortunate thing, because that was just like forever burned into my mind. But I was talking to one of my friends on the Chinese team. It was kind of in a fun competition. It was a push competition a few years ago, but I was, I was just saying, yeah, you know, after this, I'm gonna have to, I'm gonna have to go back to work. And he's like, what do you mean work? I was like, oh, I'm, you know, I work in architecture. He's like, this is not your job? I was like, no. I was like, is this your job? He's like, yes. He's like, if I had to do something else, I would quit this. Wow. I'm like, are you kidding me? No. He's like, yes, like, we this is, this is what I get paid to do. He's, and I was like, do you get paid to, like, win races too? He's like, yes, you don't? I'm like, oh, my gosh, it's like, that movie with like that, wait, you're getting paid?

Jeff Matevish:

We're the Millers, or something like that.

Dan Barefoot:

Yeah. Like, it's almost like that, yeah. And then it came down to hearing what the, the guy who won bronze for China in their home games, what he was given for that. And I don't even know if I want to like, put yeah, but it's a lot, wow, like in the, in the millions worth of USD, yeah.

Drew Thomas:

So, I mean, I guess they don't have, do they, maybe it's one of those things where they just don't have a lot of professional, like we have, sort of the professional leagues that we, that we follow in the United States. Yeah, baseball, football, you know, NBA, NHL. But beyond that, it falls off pretty steeply, you know, I mean, maybe golf, maybe tennis, you get you, you get some pro-athletes. But after that, like a lot of the other uh, events, sports, things like that that are in the Olympics or things in the US, they're just not as popular. I would, are they more popular in Europe and stuff?

Dan Barefoot:

Definitely. Okay, yeah, yeah. Like, if you go to just a random hotel or restaurant in Germany that have the races on replay. Oh, wow. It's not live, like, there they'll be showing bobsled, luge, like, in the gym, you'll be, like, working out, and they're having watching a luge race. Yeah, this is cool. Like, I've never seen a luge race on TV or a skeleton or anything like that.

Drew Thomas:

So, yeah, yeah, unless it's the Olympics, like,

Dan Barefoot:

Right, right, ESPN 12. in the US, the US, it's the Olympics, maybe the world, maybe the world events. But that's, that's and it's usually on ESPN the Ocho, like, yeah.

Drew Thomas:

Which really stinks, because what you do is really impressive to me. I don't, I honestly don't know that I would have done, so, so after you did the 30 mile an hour, sort of halfway up, like, and you kind of obviously liked it, yeah, how long did it take you to get to, you know, from from doing that, from doing that first initial run, to reaching a point where you were good enough that somebody said, hey, do you want to, you want to race for, for Team USA, right?

Dan Barefoot:

Like, yeah, it's the timeline could be different for everybody. But I would say between you going from lower to actually going from the top, could be maybe a month, you know, you do, like, a month, sort of working your way. And it's not necessarily a month straight.

Jeff Matevish:

Yeah, like little baby steps, yeah. You could be like, heading back home and then you come back or whatever, yeah, but eventually you start going from the top, and they don't let you run. They just say, hey, you know, just walk it off. But then eventually you start running, and, I would say within three months of your starting your full force sprinting. And then maybe from that point, you know, it could be a year or two years before they're like, okay, you're, you can definitely, you know, face some other countries. You, you might have a run that's really good. You might wipe out the next one. You know, your consistency is the biggest thing that's not there in the beginning. But yeah, I would say people start showing sort of spurts of quality within a couple years.

Drew Thomas:

Yeah, so and then, so do you then pick, like, obviously, you picked skeleton, right? And so, where does that name come from by the way, do you know?

Dan Barefoot:

Really good question. Every, I feel like everybody that is asked this gives a different answer, okay, especially like in other countries as well. What I will do is give you a little bit of the history of skeleton. Okay, so Saint Moritz, which is still the only natural track in the world, that's where the first racing for skeleton, bobsled, all that started. Okay, and I could get this a little bit wrong, but generally, there's this town of Saint Moritz, which is really awesome, you know, winter sport vacation spot, if you've never been there. Actually, it's the jersey that I gave you guys. Oh, yeah, yeah. And then there's a town nearby that's a little bit cheaper to stay in, called Celerina, okay. And the workers who were working in Saint Moritz were staying in Celerina, and to get back, they thought, let me, let's just, you know, carve out a little trail and we'll sled back. It just started as a basic sort of, you know, workers getting back to their hotels. And then eventually it started, this was in the 1800s, and eventually it started getting a little bit more competitive. And then, of course, wouldn't, you know, there was some great britain tourists that were there, and they, you know, they started seeing this, and they, they started telling their friends about it. All of a sudden, money started getting put into this. They started building official tracks. And then wouldn't you know, you know, 100 years later, they're still building the track in the same place they did, obviously it's much better. Yeah, and people are going a lot faster, you know, 86-87 miles an hour, head first. But yeah, it all, it all came from, you know, just workers trying to get back.

Jeff Matevish:

Had a utility, yeah.

Drew Thomas:

I mean, that's, I don't know. I think there's probably a lot of things that are like that, if you look at the history of it, but that's really neat, because you would think that, I don't know, you would think that it would, wouldn't be quite that mundane, I guess, in a way, like.

Jeff Matevish:

Everybody wants to leave work and get home as quickly as they can.

Drew Thomas:

Fred Flinstone on the Brontosaurus tail or something. Yeah.

Dan Barefoot:

It could be, it could be sort of the lack of intelligence, of sending your body head first that they called you, you're a skeleton. Or could actually be the thing that we lay in, our saddle is sort of ribbed, looking okay. So, some people say that, you know, just looking at the sled, it looks kind of like a skeleton.

Jeff Matevish:

Okay, yeah. So, what made you decide skeleton versus bobsled, you know, head first vs feet first?

Dan Barefoot:

Sure, I mean, I think part of it has to do with what you think he'd be good at. Okay, yeah, so, like, the bobsledders, it would be awesome if there was one sitting next to me, you'd see the difference. Oh, yeah. Like, if I, if I, you know, sat up right, their shoulders would be right here, this much wider. They're just big. They're like, football players, wow, they're big dudes because the sled they're pushing is, is 400 pounds. Okay, versus the sled I'm pushing is like 80 pounds.

Jeff Matevish:

So, does weight play into this? Like, is it better to be a skinny skeleton rider or a larger, you know, have more mass for faster or does that work that way?

Dan Barefoot:

If you can be skinny and heavy, that's the best of both worlds. Okay. Because aerodynamics definitely has a play and so does weight. And people were like, well, if you did a free fall, you know, I don't know who's saying this, but it's true. If you did a free fall between a light object and a heavy object, they're hitting the ground the same time, right? But when you're going down ice, and there's a little bit of texture on the ice, now you have surface friction, and a heavier object is going to overcome that surface friction better than a lighter object. So, you're sort of, you definitely are trying to get to the maximum weight that you can, which for us is a combined 120 kilos, okay, sled, helmet, body, everything. We're trying to get as close to that as possible, just to give us an advantage.

Drew Thomas:

Huh. Wow. So, well in so you even said that one of the things is, you know, you're moving from place to place so often, and that has to make it difficult to, to eat healthy. I mean, really, because, I mean, typically, whenever you're on vacation, like when I'm on vacation, I'm eating at restaurants, I'm eating it fast food, yeah, whatever. But in your case, if you're trying to maintain a certain, a certain weight, a certain physique, obviously you're not, you know you're not going to be, you're not going to be, you're not going to be me. I mean, like, I mean, I say that self-deprecatingly, but you're not going to be me going down the ice and being successful, even though I'm heavy because I'm not aerodynamic. So, how does that work? Like, is that, is that expensive? Like, does that, does that play into it too?

Dan Barefoot:

Yeah, for sure. I mean, everywhere you go, you could just say, I don't feel like cooking, I'm just gonna eat out every day. Yeah. And you know, as athletes, because we work out so much, you probably wouldn't notice a huge impact immediately. But in the long term, you would. Even if, even if it wasn't in your body weight, you would feel lethargic. You know, you would, wouldn't, you wouldn't perform, you know, your top. So, it's definitely important to, you know, at least five days a week, you know, if you're going to cheat on those other two days, five days a week, try to, you know, make something that's pretty clean. A lot of us just kind of stick with something that we know, you know. So, even if it's just making a pot of rice, and then, you know, something simple, simple with a chicken or a beef or, you know, a pasta or something, but not really venturing out that much. And if we do eat out somewhere, try to stick it to the proteins, because those are the biggest things that you know, are the hardest things to get usually, yeah, restaurants usually like to sell carbs. You know, it's easy to get carbs and fats.

Drew Thomas:

Yeah, unlimited breadsticks, you know, that kind

Jeff Matevish:

Though it maybe healthier to eat in different of stuff. You know. countries than in all the US. I mean, we're not the healthiest country in the world.

Dan Barefoot:

Yeah. Like, you can have a loaf, finish a loaf of bread, in three days worth of sandwiches, you will not have the same weight impact as you did if you were and I don't want to, like, there's obviously a lot of science that goes into this, but just anecdotally, I lose weight every time I'm in Europe. And hey, maybe stress is involved in that, you know, because I'm competing. And, you know, there's all those things going on. But even when I was in Europe in 2012 for my study abroad, I came back 15 pounds lighter. And I am going to tell you, I did not cut out any meals. I ate as much as I could, yeah, every meal, and I still came back 15 pounds lighter. Wow, makes you think, yeah.

Drew Thomas:

I mean, I know that there's an issue to some degree in the US with, and we're, I know we're kind of getting a little off topic, but, like, but, no, no, I mean, but, you know, the idea that, you know, the United States is so huge and not everywhere in the United States is necessarily good for growing certain things. So, if you want wheat, right, and breads and things like that, you have to get it from basically the Midwest, you know. And so that has to be farmed, and then it has to be, you know, trucked or trained or somehow transported the other part [of the country], so, there's a lot more preservatives and things like that, where, you know, if you're in Italy, Italy is as big as, like, you know you're right, yeah. So, it's a little easier to get fresh 100% food and stuff like that over there. But still, that's so, so how do you said you're you said you're in architecture, yeah? So, so you do have a job, yeah. How does that work with your training?

Dan Barefoot:

It's changed a lot over the years. I used to be full-time salary, and I would take, like, PTO, okay, because I got to do these camps, or whatever, these sliding camps, and then the more serious you get, you start racing, you're like, I'm not, I don't have enough PTO for this. Can I take, you know, this time off, or can I take my computer with me and try to work on these projects. And then that was, I started at a different company, and now I eventually moved to North Carolina. I still work out of North Carolina, Charlotte, but I live up in Lake Placid, New York, so I work remotely, fully remotely. But in this process, we figured out that switching to part-time, not having any benefits, like literally removing all of my benefits, PTO, anything you can think of. Insurance, and then building that amount into my hourly rate. So, if I worked a whole year, I would get paid the same as if I was on salary. Okay, right? So, yeah, it was kind of a clever, you know, thing they came up with.

Drew Thomas:

That's, that's pretty cool, that you found the company that was willing to work with you to do that. I mean, that's, that's pretty impressive, because not a lot of companies would take the, take the time and effort to come up with something like that for you, so that's awesome.

Dan Barefoot:

I see a lot of people come from something, you know, a little more stable, and then just getting, you know, axed. And, you know, they sort of went from their corporate job into waiting tables, you know, yeah, nearby town or Lake Placid. You know, some people do a lot of miscellaneous things, you know, walking dogs, cleaning houses, whatever they can think of, to kind of scrape up some money. Wow, yeah, it's, it's a weird, and it's not just my sport, really. It's any US, any US, like Olympic-level sport. And that's ironic, because you brought up the the sort of the big five sports in the US, yeah, people love watching that, yeah, and it's, and I love it too, don't get me wrong, but it's like, there's not a lot they got to worry about, you know, versus, sure, all your other sports, which are super cool, but they don't get the TV time because they don't those

Drew Thomas:

Yeah, yeah. And even, like, at the college level, I mean, it's getting ridiculous, how much money is going into college athletes and things like that too, you know? I mean, yeah, and the transfer portals and things like that where, I mean, it's almost like you're not really going to college anymore. You're, you're just play, you're playing football. And you happen to, yeah...

Jeff Matevish:

You get a piece of paper to play football, yeah, how do you get the money to do it?

Drew Thomas:

Yeah, you know. And that's great if you're good yeah. enough to do that. I mean, I'm not, but, but don't pretend, let's not pretend that this is an activity for the school anymore, right? I mean, there's, there's a lot of money going into this, right? And so, so how else do you, obviously, you have a job, but, I mean, do you also get sponsorships? Do you get, like, I know you said you were putting stuff, you said put sort of like, sponsors and stuff on your, on your suits and stuff. But, like, so how much, how do you, how do you do that? Like, how, if you, if you want to get into one of these kinds of sports. And, like you said, if you had known how much money was going to cost you might not have, but what do you do other than, other than try to work as hard as you can when you

Dan Barefoot:

Yeah, well, and the trick is working as hard as you can or as little time as you can, because the more time you take away from training. You know, sure, I can afford the season, but I suck. You know, that's not what we want either, yeah. And I kind of felt that in the beginning of my career, like I was like, Okay, I need to change this balance. I'm a little heavy on the working side, but yeah, for for the support stuff. For me personally, the hometown has been huge. You know, everybody in Johnstown, sharing, talking about it, you know, oh, I have a friend who owns this business. I wonder if he'd be interested in just that kind of stuff. You know, my mom works at AmeriServ, you know, with you guys. And, you know, she talked to you guys in marketing. And, you know, just getting the story out there, it's been amazing, like, without, if I would, you know, if I would, I guess, make a, you know, a pyramid, without my parents, family, everybody in Johnstown, there's, like, no sport endeavor, yeah, you know, I came into the sport with, with some savings, and honestly, that's really the only way that I was able to make it work for the first few years, because I, you know, had a job, and I also had some savings, but I used all that, and now it's like, all right, limits is next year. Let's make this happen.

Drew Thomas:

Yeah, so, so, so, so, without the, you know, sort of putting an elephant in the room, so the Olympics is the goal? Like, is that, is that okay? What really is involved in, in doing that? Like, does every, I don't imagine that there's a large, there's, there's, how can I say this? There's, there's not as many people vying for spots on the skeleton team as there are, say, the Penn State football team, right? Good point. But you know, I'm sure there's more than just you. Yeah. So, how, so what's the goal like? How does the goal happen for you to reach that? Do you have to place so well in so many races? Or, how does that? How does that work?

Dan Barefoot:

Yeah, no, this is a great question. So, and a lot of times when we think of like, where do we need to get to, you know, rank wise, in order to make it to a certain level, a lot of times you think of like, internally, like, I got to be my teammate. Or, oh, he's doing this. I got to do that. There might be a little bit of that, but realistically, what takes you to either world championships or an Olympics is hitting a quota spot when ranked against the other country sliders. So, not to get very deep into this, but as an example, in the Olympics, the top two countries will get three sleds. The next seven countries will get two sleds, and then the next nine countries will get one, and it's all based off of individually ranked people. So, if, if me, I'm currently ranked second, the US, if me as a second rank slider is better than nine other countries, the nine other top countries, second rank slider, then I will go to the Olympics. Okay, if I'm number 10, then I'm the first sled that misses. And now US only gets one sled, so now I have to be the best US sled, right? So, it's not an internal fight, yeah, as much of it is, you know, across other countries.

Drew Thomas:

Okay, so and then, so you sort of mentioned, I that there was you have had conversations with people that have said that, oh, well, this is my job. This is what I do. What about training? Like, are, do you have trainer like, do you work with trainers in the US exclusively? Do you, are there, I don't know how many, I guess my question is, how many people are really trained and skilled enough to teach this for, for people? Like, is it something that where you go outside the US, or are there people here in the US that do this?

Dan Barefoot:

Great question, before the, before, two years ago, everybody sort of had their own guy to go to. It could have been a college track coach, you know, could have been somebody that in the gym that they hired. There was a guy, there was, there was this, you know, in shape dude that went to the gym that I lived at in Orlando. And I was, like, I was already, you know, in pretty good shape because I was training, but the direction might not have been there, you know. So, I was like, hey, I'm gonna be trying out for this team in like, six months. Can you give me some, you know, can I work with you? And so I ended up doing that for, you know, 10 sessions or whatever, which was eye opening in some ways, you know, because it's sort of showed you where your weakness is and, you know, strengths were. But then with it, then two years ago, we hired a coach from Great Britain. He used to slide skeleton for Great Britain, but then he got into sports science and sort of strength and conditioning. Okay, so he worked with them a little bit. Then he actually went to China and worked with them that whole quad. They All saw great push numbers improvements, and then somehow we convinced him to come to the US, and he has like this joint contract between skeleton and luge, but we've been working with him. Last summer was the first full summer that I worked with him. And when I say I trained hard in high school football. Like everybody, they push you through it. Yeah. A lot of times, not science based. They just put you through it, to be put to put you through it, yeah. But I think that this last summer's training was harder than that. Wow, yeah, it's like the next two weeks for me, before my, my off season starts, I have to do sort of pre-training training, because if I just go into my off-season training, I won't make it or I'll hurt myself, so I actually have to do two weeks of sort of preparation training to get ready for him.

Jeff Matevish:

So, during the off-season, you're mostly in the gym. Do you, do you travel outside of the country to do any, any of this?

Dan Barefoot:

I travel as little as possible, okay, when I'm not competing, it's just...

Jeff Matevish:

So, in the winter time, that's when you're on the track, and in the summertime, you're in the in the gym.

Dan Barefoot:

In the gym, sprinting on, you know, that's, you know, regular running trend, something like that.

Drew Thomas:

Yeah, because that, I guess that's where you build up most of your, I mean, that's your, how far is it at the top, like, about 100 feet, something like that?

Dan Barefoot:

For sprinting, yeah, yeah, it's about 100 feet. Like, I think in meters, you know, because we

Drew Thomas:

So, I did that just by watching TV. I was like [inaudible]. do everything over there. Yeah, right, right, right, yeah.

Dan Barefoot:

30 meters, yeah, it's about 100 feet, yeah.

Drew Thomas:

So, you're sprinting for 100 feet, and then you're, you're, you're throwing yourself, now, I guess it's got to be, do luge guys, how do they get on their sled then?

Dan Barefoot:

Oh, you need to watch a race. Yeah, it's fun watching them. It's actually fun watching them train too. Because, yeah, so basically, here I've got to get away from the mic again. Yeah, that's right, you know, they have these handles that come out and they sort of like rock back and forth until they get enough momentum that they rip. Oh, yeah, they do these little paddles. Okay, I tried it. I wish I had this video. I might have to send it to see if you can clip it in. But I tried luge in their train in their start house. It is not as easy you think it would be, yeah, they sort of paddle their way down the ramp.

Drew Thomas:

But that's gonna be, like, that's got to be, like, all upper body strength, oh, yeah. I mean, as opposed to, yeah, where you, you probably focus more on the legs and, like, sort of overall.

Jeff Matevish:

Because that's how you're steering and stuff, right? Yeah, use the legs.

Dan Barefoot:

I literally don't do our body, yeah. Like, we, we were trying to get our coach to let us do last year because, you know, guys like to have fun and do bench whatever. He's like, no, we're, you're not doing upper body because it's an aerodynamic thing. Oh, right. And it's like, you also want your weight to be sort of in the middle, you know, okay, helps with sliding.

Drew Thomas:

So, yeah, so, so, so you were talking a little bit technique whenever we talked last week, a little bit, sort of, sort of in prep of this, and you said, I did not know this, you're basically balancing on, on your on your rails, right? So, it's not really...

Jeff Matevish:

Like a teeter-totter, yeah.

Drew Thomas:

Yeah, it's not like a sled, like whenever you go down the hill, whenever you're a kid, and it's just this big, flat piece of plastic, and you just, like, you're, you're really balancing on a very narrow point of balance, right on the middle. So, where do, where do you get the equipment for this? I mean, I know we kind of made that joke before, like, you can't just walk into Dunham's or something. But where do you get the, do you have to specially make it? Do you, is

Dan Barefoot:

Yeah, so to back up, we can talk about the runners, in particular, those the rails, yeah, the steel that there special companies that do this? How does that [work]? comes from those is sort of strictly governed. It has to have the International Bobsleigh & Skeleton Federation logo stamped on the steel. Okay? In very exact measured location. Yeah, and if you don't use their steel, when they check your sleds in the races and stuff like that, they'll know and you'll get disqualified. So, you have to use this exact steel. You can make your own runners, but you just have to buy the steel from them. And it's it's in two locations in Europe. Most people are going to be buying their equipment, both the sled and the runners from one of the like the common manufacturers. One is a guy in the UK, Bromley is what we call it, and then this other guy is in Germany, and it's a Schneider and a lot of people use both. I've been using a Schneider sled for the last four years. He makes the runners and the sled. A lot of these top countries, is nothing against these equipment makers, but a lot of these top countries make their own countries make their own. And part of it is because maybe they figure something out that they want to try. But it's also like, hey, if we want to make something, I don't want to have to order it from, you know, some other country, and wait for it to get here. The US used to make their own. Okay? In 2014 if you did a little bit of Wikipedia searching, you would see, we did pretty well in Bobsled and Skeleton in the 2014 games. And for whatever reason, I'm assuming funding, yeah, that program sort of stopped. So, in the last 10 years, US has been using either leftover things from that program, which is not being innovated anymore, or bought it from a standard manufacturer. Okay, so the goal is to try to get back into the realm of making your own equipment and be competitive like that.

Jeff Matevish:

Well, how do they, how do they control the, I don't know the quality, not the quality, but like, the composition of the rails then? Like, if every country can make their own and all you have to do is put a stamp on this thing, I mean, how do they?

Dan Barefoot:

That's a good they could, in theory, you could, like, fake a stamp. I guess.

Jeff Matevish:

They don't test the metal is what I'm getting at I guess.

Dan Barefoot:

They do test. I honestly don't know how they do it. There used to be, like, their hardness test had like this, this, like steel pin, and they put a gun up to it, and basically how that pin would tell you how hard the steel is. I'm not sure if they still use that method anymore, if they're kind of doing more of like a electromagnet scanning, or something like that electron scanning, but they try their best to say, everybody's using the same material. The design of that material is up to you. So, you can bend it different ways. You know, the grooves that you cut into it for steering could be different shapes. How you sand it, you kind of make it shiny. Okay, could be different, yeah.

Jeff Matevish:

So, there's a little, little customization that you can do, okay.

Drew Thomas:

Yeah, it's, I mean, this sounds like an oversimplification, but it's kind of like, you know, whenever you're a kid and you're making paper airplanes.

Jeff Matevish:

Or Pinewood Derby car.

Drew Thomas:

Yeah, cars, yeah, that's an excellent, that's an excellent analogy. But even with the weight, oh yeah, because I think that a lot of people think though, like, oh, if I just make my Pinewood Derby car, like, super aerodynamic, but it's super lightweight, you lose every time. Like, it's, it's, it's the weight that gets you.

Dan Barefoot:

My gosh, I'm so happy you brought Pinewood Derby up. Yeah, that was a big moment in my life, really. Oh, so I was also, I also became a woodworker. I'm, I don't do a lot of it now that I'm in skeleton, but I'm a passionate woodworker. And I swear a lot of that came from your first car, your dad kind of makes for you. Oh, yeah. But we won, you know, first place, yeah. And, man, that was a moment for me. I'm like, wait, you can go down and you're in the basement, do some stuff on the chop saw, and you can win something, you know. So, that was a huge moment for me, you know, just in sort of learning that these things are possible. But yeah, like, you know, the contact of the wheels on the ice is like runners, the weight of the sled is like your body, you show up light aerodynamics, keep your shoulders down. Yeah, Pinewood Derby is such a great comparison.

Drew Thomas:

Yeah, that's the, see, that's cool so. So, when do you find out, for example, you said that obviously your ultimate goal is, is to try to make the Olympic team, you know, and well, you're so explain this. You're kind of on the Olympic team now, right? But you're but...

Dan Barefoot:

Yeah, so like, the quota things that I explained, yeah, that sort of stuff is figured out after, like, through the competitive year coming in, okay, so, like, this year that I'm training for, okay, from November to, you know, February, are those races that will rank us for, you know, qualifying for the games. Okay, yeah. So, like, where I was ranked this past year was enough to qualify for World Champs, World Championships, and that was my third, you know, in a row that I qualify for. So, like, the goal is to kind of do the same thing, but a little bit better, because the qualification for the Olympics is a little bit tighter. Okay. And unfortunately, that is all about TV rights. So, yeah, like NBC basically says, hey, skeleton men and women, these are how many sleds will give you time for, yeah. And unfortunately, there's a lot of good sliders who don't make the cut then because, because of that. So, the goal is to get into that, into that cut.

Drew Thomas:

Wow, that's really, that's, that's really cool. I can, I cannot imagine. I've, seen over the years, you know, they usually have TV commercials, things like that, you know, like, you know, leading up to the Olympics, during the Olympics, of, of people that are in these kinds of sports. And you wonder, sometimes how they got into it, and the fact that you could get into something like this and end up on the Olympic team by simply just going like, man, I need something else to do. I'm just gonna Google like winter sports. It's just amazing to me. And it's, I think that's really fascinating, because it just goes to show sometimes that you don't always realize what...

Jeff Matevish:

You can do anything, yeah, you can do anything.

Drew Thomas:

You know, if you just try and put yourself out there instead of just assuming you can't do it, yeah. And so, when? So, when your parents, when you started getting better at this, and you said your parents were probably, like, the, are the top of that pyramid you mentioned in terms of, you know, funding and things like that. Like, yeah, what did, what did they say? Whenever you said, like, hey, mom, dad, I want to

Dan Barefoot:

Yeah, so I definitely didn't tell him right be, I decided I want to be a skeleton, a skeleton slider. away. Yeah, it was, I should say. I didn't tell him when I was training for it. Okay. Because, you know, I was still working full-time. Why stir something that might not even you know happen? Let me, let me just put my focus, head down, focus, see what happens. I end up making, you know, qualifying for the trip to the, to the training center. And I was like, man, I need to tell them now, like, this is kind of cool. I'm gonna go and try this thing, you know. So, I'm gonna head, I'm just gonna head to the Olympic training center like, what? Yeah, I'm, like, I'm there's this thing that I tried out for, and I earned enough points, you know, so I'm just gonna see you, see what, see how it goes. And, well, yeah, yeah, there's a little bit of second guessing, but all right, like, have fun. You know, you went up there, did that, you earned enough points again. Like, okay, like, we're gonna put you on the ice now, and you slid. I made sure I had a GoPro on, because not only did I want to remember this, yeah, I wanted them to see it. And you look like you are cooking. Yeah, you're going 30 miles an hour. Like you feel like, where am I? Yeah, I'm sure, I'm sure there was hesitation in the beginning, and they would tell you the same thing, but as the the progression kind of continued, and I started racing, yeah, that quickly turned into go faster. What are you doing?

Drew Thomas:

Are there other skeleton moms?

Jeff Matevish:

Is there a club? Yeah.

Dan Barefoot:

You know, like the baseball dad.

Drew Thomas:

Yeah, you get the soccer moms, the baseball dads. And, no, that's, I mean, so and then whenever you first, so, I guess at some point you had to be like, well, you know, I need some, I need some cash to, kind of like, were you trying to fund all this on your own at first?

Dan Barefoot:

going to ask, you know, because the first suggestion was making GoFundMe and that stuff. And I'm like, I can't, what am I doing that for? You know, he will do that for XYZ, you know, like, medical things, things like that. Like, this was my choice, and so I did the best I could, working full-time, paying for it working full-time. And it was kind of happening, right, yeah, and all of a sudden you started to have to travel more, and you're like, oh, shoot, this is not gonna work, you know. So, I put up my first GoFundMe, and ended up doing, you know, pretty well. I don't remember the amount, but it was, you know, few $1,000 and it helped finish the season. And then I realized, oh, well, now I, based on how I race, I'm going to be going up higher, you know. And once that happens, you're like, okay, I need to make a plan, yeah. And fortunately for some of the new guys coming in, we tell them this right away, when I came in, that wasn't really a thing that was, you know, expressly shared. And costs have changed over the years.

Drew Thomas:

You were, you were one of the guys that was building the track in Saint Moritz, right for the first ones, like.

Dan Barefoot:

Yeah, unfortunately, at least in this economy, you know like, everything is, I've been doing this for eight years, you know, five, six years ago, the cost of going to Europe was so much cheaper. And it's not even just going to Europe, but the cost of everything, everything, rental car, yeah, you know, yeah, getting a week's worth of groceries. So, yeah, I mean, it's, it's unfortunate, but it's, you know, you just got to play the game. Yeah.

Jeff Matevish:

We had switched topics pretty quick, but I wanted to go back to something, just talking about sponsorships. Do you have, like, obligations or criteria? So, if you get a sponsor, what do you have to do? What does that mean? Right? Like you said, you put their their logo on, your shirt, yeah, sure, yeah. Do you have to do anything else?

Dan Barefoot:

No, that's a great question. So, there's sort of one thing that I sign every year, and the goal is to not sign it, okay, but it's the USA Bobsled Skeleton Marketing Agreement. Okay, when you sign that agreement, they give you a little bit of money, but there's a bunch of verbiage in there that, you know, limits, what you can show for other sponsors. Stuff like this. Talks about logo sizes, the placement where you're allowed to put that on your sled, where it can be on a jacket if you're being, if you're warming up for a race, can't be in x, y, these places, you know. Okay, so I do the best that I can to fit those parameters, because I signed the marketing agreement, sure, yeah, and get, you know, the few $1,000 that they give. The goal is to have enough sponsors where I don't sign anything, and there's nothing, you know, controlling me. So, you know, I'm just, you know, throwing something out there. If AmeriServ was, you know, a $10,000 sponsor, and I didn't sign the marketing agreement, maybe the whole sled says AmeriServ. Okay, gotcha, yeah, because I signed the marketing agreement, I have to stick within, you know, a parameter of inches, right? And it has to be in a certain location, which is kind of the bottom of the sled.

Drew Thomas:

So, so you're on the rear quarter panel of the NASCAR, like in tiny, as opposed to being on the hood, yeah, you help with this, right? know,

Dan Barefoot:

Exactly, yeah, exactly it. And it's like you're kind of stuck between a rock and a hard place. But it's like, if you get, if you, if you build yourself sort of the freedom that you need, you know, and you don't have to, you know, work into the parameters, it can get really awesome. Like you can, you can, I could be wearing a, you know, what's a cool energy drink, you know, I could be wearing, I could look like an energy drink bottle.

Jeff Matevish:

Does anybody help you get sponsorships? Or this is all your own type thing?

Dan Barefoot:

It's largely on our own, or and honestly, teammates and just family, you know, we each were like, oh, you know, I heard about this guy. Seems like something is either close to you or something you would like, you want to reach out to them. You know, there's a lot of, you know, that sort of thing, yeah. But.

Drew Thomas:

So talk, so talk about your brand, yeah, because you're, you're wearing you have, you have sort of a brand on, right? So, yeah, so, so what, yeah, there you go. Plug. So, so, so what, so do you came up with a brand basically, to help,

Dan Barefoot:

Yeah, Mystique Ro, my teammate and I were sitting down. It was, like our first year, and we were in Park City. It was like the first time we were not at Lake Placid. No, we're like, brand new. Didn't know anything about it was gonna be, kind of, we were like, we need to come up with, you know, something that demarcate ourselves. And so we kind of sat down and started sketching, and I came up with mine. And, you know, she knew she has hers, but basically the goal was moving forward, we are going to brand our journeys under what they are. And it's, I thought this was clever, what she came up with, because obviously my last name, and, yeah, the sort of anything else, that miracle on ice, you know, yeah, things, all this. It just, it just seemed to work. People liked it, yeah. So, you know, it's on, it's the Instagram handle, it's the Facebook handle. I do have the rights to for website, so the goal is to get that up and running before, you know, this coming year. But it's been really fun people, people seem to and to have enjoyed that. Yeah.

Jeff Matevish:

Where is the best place to follow your journey? You know, if somebody wants to learn more about you.

Dan Barefoot:

I would say most people are probably going to find it easy just on Facebook, okay, yeah, or Instagram, but I, my goal is to be putting more stuff, you know, the website I think will be a good landing page, because a lot of stuff you're going to see on Facebook and Instagram are sort of just recaps on, you know, a story or a race. But I'm hoping to be putting a lot more on the website, you know, maybe things you know, to buy, yeah, maybe links to the past races, you know, just real cool, active, active stuff.

Drew Thomas:

Yeah, um, for anybody that, that is interested in doing, like, some sort of help, do you have a GoFundMe or anything like, what, what's out there that you could, if somebody was listening and wanted to, to float you some, some cash to get you to wherever you need to go next. What would be the best way to do that?

Dan Barefoot:

So, the cool thing now is, just last year, we came up with a nonprofit that specifically designed for bobsled and skeleton athletes, and it's helped a lot of people so far, so it's fantastic. But the nonprofit is called Project Push to Gold Fund. Okay, if you go to projectpushtogoldfund.org, you can donate to US athletes. And you know, it goes to, there's no service fees, there's no because it's run by the athletes. You know, like, it goes directly to whatever it needs to go to. You know, if you want to donate it for, for to

Drew Thomas:

Yeah. I mean, I think that's pretty, that's pretty cool, because I think in today's world, especially, people feel passionate about certain things, and they want to be able to feel like they're a part of it. And sometimes the only way to be a part of something like this, honestly, is to sort of feel like you helped somebody move their their journey, their dream, forward, you know. And I think that we see a lot of that online these days, of just people saying, well, you know, I donated to this, that or the other thing. I mean, there's, I mean, there's, there's a, I, I don't know how much you were, you, you probably too young to remember there was a, there was a TV show on, and then in the 80s, called Knight Rider, okay, it was, it was, it was, it was a, it was a TV show about, about a guy that, you know, drove a Trans Am, and it was, like a talking car and stuff like that. But there's, there's literally a guy out there now that found the original trailer, like the original, like equipment or whatever that was used in the filming, and they're restoring it, and people are donating like crazy to this kind of thing, you know. And so I'm just saying, like, there's, there are people out there that really would like to help you realize a lifelong dream, eight year dream, to be able to do this. Because how long can you, how long can you slide, like, how long can you do this at a high level?

Dan Barefoot:

Yeah, I mean, I'll be 35 by the time that Olympus comes around. There's, I would say, once you're sort of 40 to 42 you're kind of, you're kind of pushing the edge. There are three athletes on our team right now that are kind of in the 40, 4 athletes on the team. They're actually, they're

Drew Thomas:

of a similar thing that you could do to mimic that obviously very good athletes, yeah, but you're kind of pushing it, you know, at that point. The slot your sliding probably continues to improve. Like, it's kind of like golf, like maybe doing your best golf at 70 years old, you know. But, yeah, you're not hitting it as far, yeah. So, it's like, the push matters so much. So, it's sort of like, where can that push sort of match the sliding quality trajectory? kind of, that kind of motion, that kind of thing, unless

Dan Barefoot:

Yeah, probably so. Yeah, a lot of people have said, like, rock climbing, or any kind of like balancing sport anything, just sort of work on body control. I don't know if you've ever seen people do like the slacklining. It's almost like a tightrope. Yeah, yeah. I have a slackline that I put up between a couple trees, and just mess around with that. But very cool, I wanted to say, you brought up the people supporting and want to be part of journeys. Yeah. Like, yeah. I think, I think the important thing to remember is, especially for US athletes, this is not an individual journey, you know, like, it's even though it's me sliding down the ice, like every step and this is, it's, it sounds cliche, but it's genuinely true, every step of the way, it's the people that put into it, you know, it's, it's almost like a company with investors, yeah, the company wouldn't have done anything, you know, without investors, without stock orders. Yeah, that's really what it is, in a way, you know, I wish that there was dividends to pay out. Yeah, maybe seeing a logo or something is enough, or seeing me on TV, but, yeah, it's really a whole team thing.

Drew Thomas:

Wow. That's really fantastic. I mean, I honestly, I honestly wish that we could talk to like I could talk to you all day. I just, I really think this is just fascinating stuff, I mean, but the, I think the big thing is just to realize that, first of all, like this was not something that you, like, you're not some of the the athletes that you, that you said about, that literally, their governments or their countries or whatever, sort of channel them into doing this. They, you know, they kind of look at certain athletes at a certain age and they say, oh, well, your bone structure suggests that you're a gymnast, right. And that's what you're going to be now. And, you know, they, whether they want to be a gymnast or not, they get you chose to do this. And I think that, that is probably the most admirable thing, is that when people say to you, like, oh, if I, what did you say, the athlete said, if I, if I had to work, I wouldn't do this. You know, I would stop doing this. Yeah, but you're doing this because you have a passion for it, and you're willing to work your butt off to make that happen. And there's no shame in saying, hey, listen, you know what I'm in between, in between, in between training and trying to eat and traveling and getting to go to how many tracks did you say there are around the world?

Dan Barefoot:

16

Drew Thomas:

16, tracks in the entire planet that I can go to to train on this, I could use a little bit of help, you know?

Dan Barefoot:

Yeah, no, I, I think I, I'm addicted to the challenge, you know, because whether it was this sport or something else, who knows, if that wasn't alphabetically listed, I might have been trying something else, yeah, you know, or getting into, I don't know, painting. I don't, I, there's always something that I'm just trying to challenge myself, you know. And that's why I like woodworking. That's why I got into the sport. It's like, what you brought up earlier, it's like, just try, like, the country that we live in especially, oh yeah,

Jeff Matevish:

Oh yeah, you have the freedom to do whatever you want.

Dan Barefoot:

Yeah, yeah. And it's like, I was talking to my mom about this, because she's, she's pretty artistic herself, and I know she has some paintings that she's working on. And I'm like, when you come home from work, like, I'm just like, pumped to do the next thing, you know, I've always been that way. Like, after I finished practice for sports, I went down to our basement, I was woodworking, or I went outside and I was trying to do something else, you know, just who knows, who cares? Like, failure doesn't matter. Yeah, you know, just try something new.

Jeff Matevish:

I wish I had that energy.

Drew Thomas:

said is something that's important, because I think a lot of younger people have this notion, and I think it's because of social media and the fact that so many people see the successes that other people achieve without realizing just exactly how much effort and time and failure, yes, actually went into, you know, they don't, nobody puts that out there and then, so you we're having an entire generation of people now that are growing up believing that they should be instantly successful at something without having all of those failures in the, in the in, you know, along the way. And I think that you learn a lot more from failure than you do from success. Success is sort of an accident of failure, a repeated failure. Yeah, yeah. So, that's an that's an important thing too. I think for people to realize is that this is not something that you like, yeah okay, yeah, you, you Googled this, and you decided I want to do this, but it took you eight years to reach where you are right now. You know it wasn't something that happened

Dan Barefoot:

doing it.

Drew Thomas:

Yeah, yeah. And on top of that, like, you, I think the other side of that too is that kind of like this, like nobody was interviewing you for a podcast when you, when you Googled this and went to your first thing, you know? So, so people seem to think that, that again, it's, oh, he was an overnight success. No, he just looks that way, because now he's getting the, the attention. Yeah, I guess, from it from but nobody was paying you any of that attention at you for the last eight years, or six years, or whatever it is. So, you got anything else, Jeff? what do you got?

Jeff Matevish:

No, I, I think I went through all of my stuff,

Drew Thomas:

Yeah. I mean, the poor man's got the nine hour car yeah. ride home, we'll cut him free. We'll cut him free. Yeah, yeah. Thank you. I mean seriously, thank you so much, yeah, for doing this. I mean this, this has been a very interesting conversation, and I hope that it's one that, that people watching and listening can, can sort of take something from and just understand that, you know, you can make something like this happen. And from a financial standpoint, it's not always easy. Yeah, it's not always easy, but it's not something that's impossible either. And yeah, so plug your, plug your brand one more time, make sure we get that. Yeah. See there you go. Yeah, that's yeah. And we'll put some, we'll put some links in the descriptions and stuff for you too. So, if people want to make donations to the organizations, stuff like that, we can, yeah, yeah. I think that's, I think that's pretty much where we're at.

Dan Barefoot:

to come back.

Drew Thomas:

Yeah, we'd love for you to come back to, yeah, come and, you know, whether you come back, come, you can show off your medals whenever you're, yeah, sweet. Yeah. We really hope so. That'd be, that'd be awesome. Yeah, thanks very much.

Jeff Matevish:

Yeah, thank you.

Drew Thomas:

This podcast focuses on having valuable conversations on various topics related to banking and financial health. The podcast is grounded in having open conversations with professionals and experts with the goal of helping to take some of the mystery out of financial and related topics, as learning about financial products and services can help you make more informed financial decisions. Please keep in mind that the information contained within this podcast and any resources available for download from our website or other resources relating to Bank Chats is not intended and should not be understood or interpreted to be financial advice. The host, guests, and production staff of Bank Chats expressly recommend that you seek advice from a trusted financial professional before making financial decisions. The host of Bank Chats is not an attorney, accountant, or financial advisor, and the program is simply intended as one source of information. The podcast is not a substitute for a financial professional who is aware of the facts and circumstances of your individual situation. Every two or four years, depending on whether you're differentiating between the summer and winter versions, the United States marvels at the talent and skill that Olympic athletes put on display and buy Wheaties boxes with photos of gymnasts or skiers on the package. We temporarily elevate people like Tara Lipinski or Michael Phelps to A-list celebrity status in the name of national pride. But when the closing ceremonies come to an end, most of these athletes return to their daily lives, spending the next 206 weeks training in obscurity until their next chance comes around, or doesn't. The United States does very little to provide funding for the athletes we celebrate for 17 days every two years. They work save and seek donations for the chance to turn their dreams into reality. Parents who want to see their child succeed often bear a large part of the financial burden. Even the parents of some of the most recognizable athletes, like the mother of gymnast Gabby Douglas, have cited the cost of training as a factor in why she had to file for bankruptcy. In talking with our guest Dan Barefoot today, Jeff and I were both inspired by his incredible work ethic. This is a man who loves what he does so much that he's willing to put in the hard work and long hours to achieve it, and we certainly wish him the best. And would ask that if you're inclined, you would consider checking out the links in the description where you might be able to help. AmeriServ Presents Bank Chats is produced and distributed by AmeriServ Financial, Incorporated. Music by Rattlesnake, Millo, and Andrey Kalitkin. Executive Producer, Jeffrey Matevish. Subscribe to the show and check out all of our episodes on YouTube or on your favorite podcast app. For now, I'm Drew Thomas, so long.

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