Former USC Breaststroker Carsten Vissering Named To U.S. Olympic Bobsled Team

Former USC standout and NCAA champion swimmer Carsten Vissering is finally going to live out an Olympic dream, except it won’t be in the pool.

On Monday, the 28-year-old Vissering was named to the U.S. Olympic bobsled team for next month’s Winter Games in Milano Cortina.

The achievement punctuates what has been quite a pivot athletically for Vissering after he excelled as a swimmer in high school and at USC.

In 2014, Vissering set a National Independent High School Record in the boys’ 100 breast while swimming for Georgetown Prep in his native Bethesda, Md., coming in with a time of 53.49 to break a 16-year-old record held by Patrick Fowler.

Vissering also once held the boys’ 15-16 National Age Group Record in the 100 breast (short course) and represented the U.S. at the 2013 FINA World Junior Championships and the 2015 World University Games.

At USC, Vissering won two individual Pac-12 titles in the 100 breast —doing so in 2017 and 2019 — and was a member of USC’s 200 medley relay team that won the NCAA title in 2018.

Vissering competed at the 2016 Olympic Trials, coming in 25th in the 100 breast and 36th in the 200 breast before retiring from swimming in 2019.

In 2023, Vissering began his career in bobsledding and has risen rapidly in that sport.

According to World Aquatics, Vissering, at the end of his swimming career, started to gain a love for weightlifting, and was intrigued by the workout routines of bobsledders.

“This guy’s life is that he gets to jump, sprint, back squat – and that’s his sport?’” Vissering said in the article. “That’s really what drew me into [bobsled]. It had nothing to do with the actual sport. It was these training qualities.”

Vissering eventually was invited to a camp in Lake Placid, New York, where he started to learn the technical aspects of bobsled.

A former member of the national bobsled team told him transitioning from swimming to bobsled would be difficult, and that many bobsledders who transitioned into the sport came from a track and field background.

Undeterred, Vissering forged on and picked up the sport quickly, making his World Cup debut in 2022, finishing 12th.

The 6-foot-5 Vissering will be on the four-man team with Kris Horn, Hunter Powell and Caleb Furnell. Two-man combinations have yet to be announced.

Vissering told World Aquatics that being a swimmer has helped with bobsled in two main areas. One, both sports require a “hyper-centralized” focus.

“You have to turn into a hyper-focused mental kamikaze, block everything out except the moment to push down this icy hill, see the wall at the end of it that turns, and still go all out – not think, ‘Oh my God, a scary wall. Are we gonna crash?’” Vissering said. “That is one of the No. 1 things that swimming has helped me with, that hyper-focused flow state mindset.”

The second area where Vissering said swimming has helped is “inter-sled dynamics.”

“Often your best friends can be your biggest competitors,” Vissering said. “You have to be able to compartmentalize work relationships, stay amicable.”

The two-man bobsled competition begins on Feb. 16, while the four-man will start on Feb. 21.