Aggie alumna Emily Azevedo isn’t going to Disneyland. At least not yet.

She’s going to the Olympics.

“Vancouver here I come!” she wrote in an e-mail to Dateline on Jan. 17 after the USA Bobsled and Skeleton Federation put her on the team for the games that are due to start Feb. 12.

Azevedo, from Chico, is on Team USA’s third sled with Bree Schaaf of Bremerton, Wash. Officially, Azevedo is the “brakewoman,” but she is also a pusher, and Schaaf is the driver. The pair won the national championship in 2009.

Azevedo, who graduated from UC Davis with a degree in exercise biology in 2005, is a first-time Olympian. She has been bobsledding for only four years.

She is not from a winter sports town, and, during her time at UC Davis, she did not compete in bobsledding (funny thing, we do not have a bobsledding team!). Not unlike other bobsledders, Azevedo has a background in track.

Bobsledders need speed and strength. They start from a standing position, dig their cleats into the iced runway and explode toward the frozen chute that goes down the mountain.

“Ninety miles an hour is the fastest we have gone,” Azevedo said. “It feels like an out-of-control roller coaster with no seat belts!”

Oh, and don’t forget: Just before the speedy descent begins, the driver and then the brakewoman must swing themselves into the sled.

That takes dexterity, something Azevedo proved she had as a hurdler at UC Davis. In 2005, she set the university’s record in the 100-meter hurdles (outdoors) at 14.23 seconds — a record that held until April 2008, and which today stands as UC Davis’ second best.

Now Azevedo has hurdled onto Team USA.

Up until last weekend, there was no guarantee that the United States would be able to send three sleds to the Vancouver Olympics; it all depended on the World Cup standings. Schaaf and Azevedo came through Jan. 16 with an 11th-place finish in St. Moritz, Switzerland, securing that third slot for the United States.

The sledders have one more World Cup competition in Igls, Austria, before they return to the states.

Results from St. Moritz show Schaaf and Azevedo with push times of 5.79 seconds in the first heat and 5.74 seconds in the second, for run times of 1:08.01 and 1:08.45, respectively. Schaaf and Azevedo were in seventh place after the first heat but fell back into 11th after Schaaf made a driving error exiting the pivotal corner named Horseshoe, according to a news release from the USA Bobsled and Skeleton Federation.

The news release included these comments: “I was 100 times more nervous for that second run than I was for the first,” Schaaf said. “We were excited and ready to go for the first run, but the second run I felt a wave of fear. I don’t know where it came from, but I almost blew up out of Horseshoe. I’m surprised I still have bunks on the left side of the sled.”

The rest of the women’s bobsled lineup for the Olympics: driver Shauna Rohbock, silver medalist in 2006, in the U.S. team’s first sled with Michelle Rzepka; and driver Erin Pac with Elana Meyers in the second sled.

Inspired by the 2006 games

Azevedo said she became involved in bobsledding in 2006 after watching the winter games with her roommates at UC Davis.

“I had just graduated from college and was not sure of my next step in life,” Azevedo wrote on her new blog. “I was done with my collegiate track career, and, long story short, thought that bobsled would be a great way to put off the real world while getting a chance to compete for Team USA.

“Of course I told my parents I thought it would help me make some connections for jobs, and that I just wanted to try it out. I was sure there would be a way to utilize my exercise biology degree in bobsledding, right?

“It took my mom a few years to stop leaving newspaper clippings of potential jobs on my desk, but I think she has finally come to terms with the career I have chosen (of course, career is used VERY loosely, as most people with careers get paychecks).”

BLOGGING, TRAINING, ORGANIZING

Emily Azevedo is blogging for In the Arena, a nonprofit organization with a goal of “connecting American youth and today’s athletes to cultivate character and community.” Follow her Olympics adventure at in-the-arena-emily.blogspot.com.

We here at the News Service know of two other UC Davis folks with Olympics connections, as participants or staff: Jill Radzinski is the athletic trainer for the women’s hockey team and Susan West ’90 is working with the Vancouver Organizing Committee.

Are you involved, or do you know of anyone who is? Please send us an e-mail: fridayupdate@ucdavis.edu.

Read more about Radzinski is this earlier Dateline story.