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For Jewish Olympian Steve Mesler, who started to learn bobsledding in Florida by pushing a car, winning a gold medal will mean more letters and emails from American kids pushing couches in their living rooms trying to master the sport themselves.

Along with driver Steve Holcomb, Justin Olsen, and Curt Tomasevicz, Mesler helped the United States win its first gold medal in the four-man bobsled since 1948 at this year's Vancouver Winter Olympics. Mesler's craft was a "joke sport" while he grew up due to the lack of U.S. success, but these days the phrase "my kid wants to be a bobsledder" isn't that uncommon, he said.

"To bring the sport back to relevance in America is great, and to be responsible for that is even better," Mesler, 31, said in a phone interview with The Jewish State while he was in Vancouver, admittedly still recovering from the "Olympic hangover" of his USA-1 team's Feb. 27 victory.

Also known as "Night Train" because of their flat black, Harley Davidson-like sled, team USA-1 won gold at the 2009 World Championships, but still had to overcome the world's most decorated bobsledder, Germany's Andre Lange, who had never lost in four previous Olympic races.

Mesler said his team thought "in our eyes, we beat Andre, we win the race," and low and behold, Lange settled for silver, .38 seconds behind USA-1's time of 3 minutes, 24.46 seconds.

A native of Buffalo, N.Y., who grew up "following [Jewish] traditions but not practicing very much," Mesler won the 1996 Indoor National High School Track and Field Championships in the pentathlon and earned a scholarship as a decathlete to the University of Florida, where he majored in exercise and sports science. As his college career was winding down in the fall of 2000 -- and not wanting to believe that his greatest athletic achievements were behind him -- Mesler sent an email to the United States Olympic Committee inquiring about becoming a bobsledder (many bobsledders are former track and field athletes).

With the warm weather of Gainesville, Fla., making it a tough place to train for bobsledding, and Mesler at that point a complete newcomer to the sport, he thought outside of the box by pushing his roommate Lynn for 40 meters at a time as she sat in her car (the vehicle was in neutral). Mesler moved to Lake Placid, N.Y., in July 2001 and got to walk in the Opening Ceremonies of the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, then joined driver Todd Hays in the U.S. four-man bobsled team for the 2006 Olympics in Torino, Italy.

Hays' team won two of the last three World Cup races heading into Torino, meaning the expectations weren't if they would win a medal, but "what color it was going to be," Mesler said. Instead, the U.S. team finished 7th, which Mesler said taught him that what you do leading up to the Olympics is irrelevant. Lange won the last four World Cup races before Vancouver, not to mention his perfect Olympic resume. But succeeding at the games is all about how you react to the increased pressure of the spectacle, Mesler said, and that's what USA-1 did well this year.

Though the casual observer might think Lange's domination of the sport should seem intimidating, he is actually "the most well-liked guy" on the bobsledding tour, Mesler said. Mesler said he was able to befriend Lange because he learned to speak German while training in the country in 2004, and is now "80 percent fluent."

Besides for dealing with Olympic pressure, bobsledders in Vancouver had to master the treacherous "50-50" curve, a nickname coined by the U.S. team's Holcomb for a section of the course where speeds reached 95 miles an hour in a matter of seconds. While Holcomb "had it down," Mesler said, other high-profile bobsledders crashed at the 50-50 curve one after another, including the 2006 Olympic silver medalists from Russia.

Starting with a torn hamstring during his senior year of high school, Mesler's athletic career was at one point checkered by disappointing injuries, the worst a torn ulnar collateral ligament in his elbow as a college senior that required Tommy John surgery. Mesler managed to persevere.

"I became a much harder and tougher athlete because of all that," Mesler said.

Mesler said he celebrates Passover, Hanukkah, and other family-oriented aspects of Judaism. His said his grandparents on his mother's side, who had strong Jewish identity, were very proud that their grandson was a Jewish athlete.

"I couldn't be more proud of my Jewish heritage and my blood," Mesler said.

After they already helped Stephen Colbert try out for the U.S. bobsled team in a skit on "The Colbert Report" prior to the Olympics, team "Night Train" is in the process of getting its post-Olympic publicity schedule in order, Mesler said, explaining that it's difficult to "flip the switch" from focusing so hard on athletic competition to soaking in the instant celebrity status that comes with victory. While gold medal winners in the first week of the Olympics had a while to make that transition, Mesler's team won on the games' second-to-last day.

For publicity, community service, and any other post-Olympic activities, team Night Train will remain intact, Mesler said.

"I think we work the best together as a team, on the ice and off the ice," he said.

Mesler, who is now based out of Calgary, said his Olympic victory "changes a lot" of his career focus, in that he intends to spend the next year or two taking part in public and motivational speaking. Mesler is particularly interested in expanding his back-to-school project, in which he partnered with 10 classrooms around the country to correspond with students throughout the Olympic season, culminating in a live video chat session from the Olympic Village days before team Night Train's gold medal race.

"To me it's a no-brainer, associating kids with the Olympic experience and with the Olympic ideals," he said.