Langton Returns Home With Bobsled Bronze

Melrose native Steve Langton always wanted to be the fastest track star around. But with his 6-foot-2, 220 pound frame, there was no way he could compete against the smaller and more nimble sprinters. 

And while the 27-year-old may not be the fastest runner when it comes to the 100-meter dash, the former Northeastern standout can reach speeds of well over 100 mph on a different kind of track: the bobsled course. 

Langton is fresh off his fourth season as a member of the USA bobsled team, where he helped the U.S. to a bronze medal in the 2011 World Championship in Königssee, Germany, a year after the team won gold in the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver for the first time since 1948. 

“I think we did extremely well for the first year of a new quad,” Langton said. “Coming off the Olympics, which is a super high, everything kind of slows down. But considering that, I think we had some really great races and we had some success. I think that success will continue.”

Langton was part of a four man team that traveled all over the world for competition. After races in Whistler, British Columbia, Calgary, Alberta, Lake Placid, NY and Park City, UT, Langton went on to Igls, Austria, Winterberg, Germany, St. Moritz, Switzerland and Cesana in Turin, Italy. 

Now Langton is finally back home in Melrose to rest up before starting another grueling training program to prepare for next season. 

“It’s nice just to be back eating American food and kind of decompressing and not having to compete,” Langton said. “I go into the city a lot. I like Boston, especially in the spring and summer. I think it’s a really cool city. My brother Chris plays lacrosse for Cornell so I plan on making as many games in the spring as I can.”

Aside from a bronze medal, Langton took first place in the first ever World Push Championships (see attached video by click "View Gallery" and selecting video), where individual bobsledders compete to see who has the fastest initial push time. 

“We have our own national push championships every year,” said Langton, who also won that in 2009. “But this was the first time that everyone from all nations competed. It was definitely a cool even and I think everyone had a lot of fun. Hopefully they had enough success that it’s something they’ll continue.”

As a standout on the Northeastern track team, Langton finished third in the 100-meter dash at the 2004 America East Championship and the following year took third in the 55-meter dash and fourth in the long jump at the 2005 America East Championship before graduating. 

But after college, Langton said he still had an itch to compete. 

"I was 23 and wasn’t ready to stop competing," Langton said. "So I sat down at a computer one day and said, ‘Steve, what can you be good at very quickly?’ Bobsledding was the first thing that came to my mind actually. I had always been really interested in it when I saw it in the Olympics. So I went online and contacted our coaches and then that September I came out for the national team combine... I ended up winning that and it kind of just went from there.”

“He always wanted to be the best...,” said Langton’s father, Stave Langton, Sr. “It’s just his mind set. He looked at the type of people in bobsledding and where they came from and lot of them came from track and field... but most of them were his size and speed so it just kind of made sense to him.

Langton comes from a long line of athletes. His youngest brother currently plays lacrosse at Cornell, while his father played football at Northeastern. So it’s no surprise that Langton excelled at sports from an early age. 

“My parents definitely gave me the tools,” Langton said. “I give them a lot of credit. I love athletics. I’ve been an athlete my entire life. I ran track through high school and college then I came across bobsledding and lucky for me it was a perfect fit. I was always bigger than my competitors in the sprints and the jumps so I picked it up fairly quickly and I haven’t looked back since.”

While Langton sites his parents with raising him to be an athlete, Langton’s father said all the credit lies with his son. 

“I had nothing to do with it,” Langton’s father said. “He just came to me one day and said, ‘This is what I’m going to do.’ We were very much behind him. We supported him because to me he was Olympic caliber. He was just out of college and he found something he thought he would be good at and it turned out he was right.”

At 27, Langton is still young by bobsledding terms, but with the 2014 Olympic games in Sochi, Russhia a full three years away, Langton is beginning to look beyond bobsledding, and hopes to one day capitalize on his degree in business leadership and entrepreneurship. 

“More likely than not I will continue until Sochi,” Langton said. "We do have a really good team and I think we can do really well. But I will definitely plan on starting a master’s degree. If not in the next three years then definitely after the Sochi Olympics.”

 “You’re only in that type of shape for so long in your life,” added Langton’s father. “As far as a career goes ... I believe after the next Olympics he’ll start some kind of business. He’s got some business ideas. We’ll help him if we can. We’re a middle-class family from Melrose and you always want your kids to do well and we’ll bend over backwards to help him.”