Lolo Jones may have made her rather lovely name as a track athlete, but one could accuse her of having a one-track mind. Following this week's announcement that she has earned a place as a pusher in the US women's bobsleigh team she has started down a new and far icier track which may yet lead to an appearance at the 2014 Sochi Winter Games.

Should the 30-year-old from Des Moines continue to perform on ice as well as she has in the last month – which is all the time it has required for her to earn this particular sporting call-up – there is a good chance that she will be in competitive action in Russia when the Games get underway beside the Black Sea on February 7.

Certainly the US bobsleigh coach, Todd Hays, appears confident that the high hurdler who narrowly missed out on Olympic medals in 2008 and this summer in London, and who has also collected two International Associations of Athletics Federation (IAAF) world indoor titles, has what it takes.

"I didn't have a lot of time to get to know Lolo through the media," he said after announcing her inclusion in the squad alongside another top class athlete, 27-year-old Tianna Madison, who won an Olympic gold medal at London 2012 as part of the sprint relay team and finished fourth in the 100m final. "These three weeks I've gotten to know her as an athlete.  And she surprised me every day with how dedicated she is. The one word I keep coming back to is, she is such a competitor.  She cannot accept not being good at something. She gets up earlier than everyone else, goes to bed later, constantly trying to get better.

"Lolo and Tianna accepted the challenge to compete for a spot on the team, and they did an incredible job. They are just tenacious competitors that want to win at everything they do. It wouldn't matter if it was ping pong, checkers or bobsled."

Jones herself, who intends to maintain her athletics career and seek further success, with the 2016 Rio Olympics still firmly in the frame, described her wintry wandering as "a breath of fresh air – cool, very cool, cold air." Which was true both literally and metaphorically. She made it clear that she felt she had needed to step away from athletics for a while and to freshen up her motivation. That job appears to have been well done.

Lolo Jones has now the United States women's bobsleigh team "pusher"

Jones will be far from the first to come to this sport from track and field. Apart from Madison, she also has as colleagues two top class university athletes in Aja Evans and Cherelle Garrett. And among the unsuccessful candidates for a place in the team this year was Hyleas Fountain, heptathlon silver medallist at the 2008 Beijing Games.

Back in 1976, Meinhard Nehmer, a member of east Germany's two-man and four-man crew at the Innsbruck Games, arrived from a background as a javelin thrower. He won two golds, and added a gold and a silver at the 1980 Lake Placid Games before going on to coach a number of bobsleigh teams, including the United States.

In the women's competition, the Canadian pair who won the Olympic silver medal at the 2010 Vancouver Olympics, Helen Upperton and Shelley-Ann Brown, both had athletics connections. Upperton was a former triple jumper at the University of Texas, and Brown went to the University of Nebraska on a track and field scholarship.

Britain has its own history of athletes crossing over to bobsleigh – albeit with varying degrees of success.

Former sprinter Lenny Paul competed for Britain at four successive winter Games from 1988 to 1998, finishing sixth in 1994 in the two-man bob with Mark Tout. Unfortunately Paul earned unwanted fame when he tried to explain an adverse doping finding for the banned steroid nandrolone by saying he had eaten tainted meat in a spaghetti bolognese. The excuse didn't work – but let's hope he enjoyed his meal anyway.

Allyn Condon joined Dan Money, John Jackson and Henry Nwume to make the Great Britain four man bobsleigh team at the 2010 Winter Games

In 2010, former sprinter Allyn Condon, who won sprint relay golds at world junior, European and Commonwealth level, became only the second person to have competed for Britain at a Summer and Winter Games – after Marcus Adam, who ran in the 200m and sprint relay at the Barcelona 1992 Olympics and finished tenth in the two-man bob at the Salt Lake Winter Games a decade later – when he competed in the four man bob at the Vancouver Olympics, a decade after he had run in the Sydney Games.

Condon and co had high hopes of a top eight finish until a 150kph crash at the bend known as 50/50 left them on their heads – and eventually in 17th place.

In 2008, Britain's former decathlete Dean Macey – the Commonwealth gold medallist and world silver and bronze medallist who finished fourth in two Olympics – took up a challenge to qualify as part of the bobsleigh team at the 2010 Olympics.

Macey teamed up in a two-man bob with old colleague Jason Gardener, an Olympic gold medallist in the 2004 sprint relay and former world indoor and European champion, and the pair performed very respectably in the 2008 British Championships at Cesena Pariol in Italy, finishing sixth.

Gardener later declined an offer to continue trying to make the team as a brakeman. Macey ended up commentating on the Vancouver Winter Games for Eurosport.

Dean Macey, Jason Gardener, Craid MacLean and Dan Luger of Great Britain bobsleigh team

At the same British championships, another freshly created sporting duo – former England rugby international Dan Luger and ex-Olympic cyclist Craig MacLean – crashed out, with the BBC recording all for the documentary they made on the four sportsmen's effort to make a winter Olympic splash.

Doubling up in bobsleigh from other sports is also a clearly established template of course – indeed, it was the one followed by the only competitor to have won gold at a summer and winter Games, Eddie Eagan, who was victorious in the four man bob at the 1932 Lake Placid Olympics 12 years after taking Olympic gold at Antwerp in the light heavyweight boxing event.

Returning to women's bobsleigh, one of the US pairing which took silver at the 2006 Winter Games in Turin, Shauna Rohbock, was a former professional footballer for San Diego Spirit. And Heather Moyse, brakewoman with driver Kaillie Humphries in the gold medal Canadian pair at the 2010 Games, is a former Canadian international in both rugby and cycling.

Switching to bobsleigh often works, and quite often means Olympic medals. Hays should know well enough himself – he was an American Football player and national kick boxing champion before he won the first Olympic bobsleigh medal for the United States in 46 years by winning silver in the four-man bob at the 2002 Salt Lake Winter Games.

Mike Rowbottom, one of Britain's most talented sportswriters, has covered the past five Summer and four Winter Olympics for The Independent. Previously he has worked for the Daily Mail, The Times, The Observer, the Sunday Correspondent and The Guardian. He is now chief feature writer for insidethegames.