Word: sledding
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Crashing in the first run of the Olympic trials five weeks ago, slightly denting his right cheek, Masley was required thereafter to slide impeccably, or the best American luge racer would have been left at home. With $600 in parts, Masley built his own sled. "I leave my job [computer drafting] for six months every year," he says, "and save every cent the rest of the time. But it's worth it, an incredible feeling, the wind rushing by. You're doing something. And this is the proudest moment of my life...
They were conventional in length, height and weight (two-man bobs may not weigh more than 858 lbs., including both crewmen). But the sled bodies were made in one piece, rather than in two as are other bobs, and they were much narrower than normal, with dramatic fins that jutted from each side of their noses and flanks. These allowed the sleds to meet the letter if not the spirit of the regulation that requires a minimum width of 34 in. Other sleds also have stubby finlike projections at the nose to stabilize the machine, and while those...
...Soviets persisted. A mysterious knuckle joint in the sled's suspension was said to make up for some of the stiffness of the one-piece body. "It's a good sled," one member of their team said last week, and then added, with a grin, "when it stays on the track." The cigarskis did stay on the track in practice. They are so speedy on the smooth curves of new artificial tracks, like the one at Sarajevo, that one official of the International Bobsled and Tobogganing Federation thought they had won the technological war. "The Soviets have taken...
...country and last to the bottom of the luge run, consists of one well-rounded American named George Tucker, who is particularly well rounded in the seat, where the number of mended holes in his suit suggests that Tucker occasionally arrives at the finish line without his sled...
...When you crash, it takes a little longer to get back," he apologizes. "You have to retrieve your sled." In the '60s, before he weighed 210 lbs., when he was a pretty handy 6-ft. 1-in. basketball player, Tucker thought of trying out for the Puerto Rican Olympic basketball team. But dreams, like pounds, like years, slip by faster than luge racers flip from their sleds. Finally last year, he says, "I got the name of the president of the Puerto Rican Olympic Committee out of the New York Times. They sent me a beret. The rest...