There are many ways to become an Olympian, and they tend to follow familiar lines. Childhood specialization. Early promise. A narrowing of options so complete that by the time the athlete arrives at the Games, there is little left in life that has not already been shaped around that single pursuit. This is not one of those stories.
Simona de Silvestro, a professional open wheel racing driver by training and trade, will compete for Italy in women’s bobsleigh at the Milano Cortina Winter Olympics. In doing so, she becomes the only female IndyCar driver to ever compete in the Olympic Games, and the only IndyCar driver of any kind to do so. That fact exists now, quietly and without announcement, and it will remain true regardless of how the races unfold.
At first glance, the path sounds improbable. Motorsports and Olympic sport are rarely spoken of in the same breath, and when they are, it is usually as a novelty. Yet bobsleigh has long occupied a small but curious overlap between racing and winter athletics. Several former Formula One drivers found their way into Olympic sleds decades ago, drawn by the shared demands of speed, precision, and courage at velocity.
What makes de Silvestro’s case different is not that she crossed domains, but how many boundaries converge at once. She arrives as a woman in a discipline long dominated by men, from an elite American open wheel series, into a Winter Olympic sport, representing the host nation, at an age when most professional athletes are being advised to consider what comes next.
Before any of that, there was a long career built on durability rather than spectacle. De Silvestro entered IndyCar as a rookie in 2010 and earned Rookie of the Year honors in a field that offered little patience for mistakes. Over more than a decade, she logged seventy one starts, including six Indianapolis 500s, and carved out a reputation as a driver who brought cars home intact and competitive. Her best seasons were not defined by dominance, but by steadiness, judgment, and an ability to survive in a profession that quietly discards most of its participants.
That background matters because bobsleigh, despite its winter setting, is not a reinvention so much as a translation. The skill is not brute strength alone. It is the ability to read a line at speed, to make decisions faster than conscious thought allows, and to trust both the machine and oneself when margins are thin. In bobsleigh, the pilot is responsible for steering a sled through ice curves at highway speeds, reacting to forces that leave no time for correction once hesitation sets in.
De Silvestro has described the transition in practical terms. The start phase, dominated by former sprinters, remains the hardest adjustment. Once the sled is moving, the task becomes familiar. She has said, with the economy of someone who understands mechanics, that the difference is simple. In a race car, the engine does the work. In bobsleigh, she is the engine. She is also thirty seven years old.
That number reframes the entire achievement. This is not a story about raw potential or youthful fearlessness. It is a story about accumulated competence being redeployed. At thirty seven, reaction time is assumed to decline. Recovery takes longer. Systems that once courted participation begin to close ranks. What remains valuable is judgment, preparation, and the ability to operate calmly inside high consequence environments. Those qualities do not appear suddenly. They are built over years, often in places that do not look like training at the time.
De Silvestro was raised Swiss, a country that does not treat borders as obstacles so much as facts of daily life. She works fluently in French, German, Italian, and English. In Switzerland, that is not exceptional. It is expected. Multilingualism is infrastructure, not ornament. The habit of moving between languages, cultures, and assumptions turns out to be useful later, when careers refuse to stay in a single lane and national affiliation becomes something lived rather than symbolic. Her Italian representation is not a costume change. It reflects family, fluency, and familiarity with a system that now trusts her enough to place her in an Olympic sled on home ice.
Years ago, long before any Olympic conversation was plausible, I worked with her and her team on a mobile app and some social media constructs. The experience confirmed what teams already understood. She approaches preparation methodically and without drama. Technology, like equipment, is a means to reduce uncertainty. Nothing is ornamental. Everything is functional.
That sensibility carries through her current results. In World Cup competition, her starts remain a challenge, but her driving through technical sections has been competitive with the best in the field. Analysts have noted that once the sled is moving, she gives away little time. The difference between participation and contention, in a sport measured in hundredths of a second, lies in margins she understands well.
It is tempting, in moments like this, to look ahead. To speculate about medals, legacies, or what this might mean for future generations. That temptation is understandable and unnecessary. What matters is simpler.
A record now exists that did not exist before. A professional career that began on racetracks widened instead of narrowing. An athlete carried excellence from one closed system into another, not loudly, not early, and not by accident. People should know about that, not because it promises a moral, but because it tells the truth about how mastery sometimes works. Quietly. Over time. And without asking for permission.