It all started as a spontaneous challenge among friends. Sports had always been a hobby, from gymnastics and indoor soccer to athletics, and Gidon certainly had a natural aptitude. "But I had never competed at a high level. My friends and I were talking once: in which sports could you still become a professional athlete at an older age? We settled on sports like archery, curling – where, by the way, two of my friends actually made it quite far – and skeleton."
During a try-out, Gidon caught the eye of the federation and was approached to join. "The try-out consisted of various physical tests: a 30-meter sprint, long jump, but also strength exercises like the power clean. It turned out I had a knack for it, even though I definitely didn't have the ideal bobsleigh weight, and my sprinting technique was terrible. Yet, despite my technique, I was remarkably fast, and that made an impression. I made it to the next round, and that’s how my training began."
At that point, Gidon had never even seen the inside of a bobsleigh. "Before you actually hit the track, you have to complete a long training trajectory in the Netherlands. At that stage, you don't fully know what you're training for, but by then I had researched the sport extensively and thought: this is a truly mighty sport."
Technique
His first time on the track followed a few months later. "To put it very simply: they give you a sled and you just go. The trick is to stay very relaxed; if you do too much, things go wrong. Compare it to a bag of sand versus a stone: a bag of sand slides down easily, while a stone bounces all over the place."
The sprint is what really makes a difference, Gidon explains. "And I had a natural feel for that. I was fast, but my technique was poor. Often, people enter the sport with a professional background in athletics. For example, Dave Wesselink and Timme Koster from the team started as hurdlers, and Timme was even a Dutch champion. I joined as a university student with no history in professional sports. So, I really had to work on my technique."
Pioneering
From that moment on, the real work began. Training, testing, and training again – all alongside his studies in Biomedical Engineering at the University of Twente. "I had no idea that top-level sports regulations existed," he says. "In hindsight, I would have loved to make use of them. But skeleton and bobsleigh are so niche in the Netherlands that you have to figure out a lot yourself. You're a bit of a pioneer."
That pioneering also meant finding his own sponsors, arranging training camps, and making his own plans. "We didn't have a massive federation backing us. So, you have to be creative. Approaching people, explaining what the sport entails. That entrepreneurial spirit is something I learned during my time as a student. In the study association, in committees... You learn to take initiative, organise things, and get people on board. That helped me enormously."
For instance, he visited companies in his skeleton suit to find sponsors. "If all those phone calls don't lead to anything, you have to try something else. I used to be shy and would never have done that, but an entrepreneurial mindset takes you a long way."
Precision: at work and on the track
That combination of initiative, perseverance, and athletic talent eventually brought him to the highest level – first in skeleton, and later in bobsleigh, where he was selected for TeamNL. "It’s a unique combination: professional sports and working as a biomedical engineer. But they actually go together quite well. In professional sports, you have to be analytical and structured, which aligns perfectly with my work."
In his role as a biomedical engineer, Gidon researches how cancer cells react to medication using "organs-on-a-chip" – small chips that mimic a section of an organ. "We use those chips to test how drugs spread and what they do to the cells," he explains. "How they move, how they grow, and how they change when you adjust the conditions." It is micro-scale research that requires precision and patience. "You work with tiny quantities, so you have to measure and analyse very precisely."
He naturally carries that analytical ability into his sport. He measures his starts, compares runs, and experiments with small adjustments in technique or equipment. "I want to understand why something works. That’s part of my job, but it’s also part of bobsleigh. You are constantly testing and fine-tuning."
The Olympic dream
And now? Now he is the reserve for the Dutch bobsleigh team at the Olympic Games. It’s a position he is proud of, but one that also brings a certain tension. "You train as if you’re going to compete, but you know you might not actually step into the sled." Still, it’s a realistic scenario that Gidon could be called upon. "Bobsleigh is a sport prone to injuries, so it could definitely happen. And while I would secretly love to be there myself, I want the best for my teammates just as much. I hope it won't be necessary."
