At the 2010 Winter Olympics on the tricky Vancouver bobsleigh track, Harvey and his teammates suffered the ultimate embarrassment on their biggest stage.

A spectacular crash forced the four-man team to withdraw completely while the two-man team finished the competition last. The debacle sparked fears Australia would pull out of the sport completely.

But four years on and the former Tamworth High vice-captain is determined to use the experience as motivation when he lines up in the two-man heats on Monday morning.

“In 2010 it was very tough for us,” he told NineMSN this week.

“For me it has never been just about making the Olympic Games but competing up in that higher echelon and getting what you want out of it and I hadn’t achieved that. So it made me want to keep going.”

Harvey will partner with Heath Spence in the two-man event at Sochi while Lucas Mata and Gareth Nichols join them for the four-man.

“Basically I just want to get out of it what I think we can achieve and we didn’t do that in Vancouver,” he said.

The four-man heats start on February 22.

Harvey was a former nationally ranked hurdler before leaving Tamworth to pursue a career in bobsleigh.