Word: podar
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...secret weapon. The team was from the U.S., and its secret was a pair of $70,000 sleds, designed and built by General Motors. For years, the best competition bobs have come from an Italian blacksmith named Evaldo D'Andrea, who produces 20 handcrafted, slipper-shaped Podar sleds a year, at prices ranging from $1,300 (for a two-man "boblet") to $1,575 (for a four-man model). Two years ago, a U.S. Air Force general with a yen for bobsledding suggested to some G.M. executives that it was time to end the Podar monopoly. G.M. was only...
Silent as a Ghost. The G.M. sleds resemble the Podars about as much as a Corvette does a Corvair. The innovations include shock absorbers and sports-car-type "direct" steering (v. the Podar's rope-controlled runners). In trial runs at Lake Placid, N.Y., last month, a two-man G.M. sled beat the best time of a heavier, four-man Podar -and the four-man G.M. was faster yet. At St. Moritz last week, astonished European bobbers nicknamed the two man sled "the Ghost" because its rubber-seated runners merely whispered over the ice-while the Podars clattered...
...four-man G.M. sled into Devil's Dyke so slowly that it could not hold the wall. The sled dropped like a stone from the face of the curve, and the runners were damaged in the fall. As a final indignity, the U.S. wound up using an old Podar sled for the two-man race. Steersman McKillip leaped in feet first-and put one leg right through the steering wheel. At that point he decided that anything was the better part of valor, and quit...
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