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SPECIAL SECTION/CANADA'S TEAM/BOBSLED | FEBRUARY 2, 1998 VOL. 151 NO. 4 |
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Hot and Cold Pierre Lueders, a reigning World Cup champ, is burning up the icy track By JAMES CHRISTIE
Lueders is also perceived as one chilly fellow. He is described by teammates as intense, authoritarian, intimidating and arrogant--and those are the nice points. But the lean second-generation Canadian is always described as a winner. Says Ben Morin, executive director of Bobsleigh Canada: "Anything less is a disappointment." Some of Lueders' colleagues think a little humility would be nice, though. Says a former teammate: "When things are going well, it's no chore to be around him. When they don't go well, it takes everything you've got not to walk away." "There's a misconception about me," Lueders says. "People call me arrogant, whatever. I want to be successful. If people don't like me the way I am on race day, too bad." Even so, when a reporter described Lueders as a "Rottweiler rather than a lapdog," his big square jaw fell open in a laugh. "How did you know I own a Rottweiler?" When sportswriters look for nice, they turn to Chris Lori, 32, of Windsor, Ont., who won the four-man world championship in 1990, and is working hard to regain that form. The dog for Lori might be a Labrador or a St. Bernard--something warm, huggable and heroic. A 14-year World Cup veteran, Lori will go to Nagano with a major handicap. He is struggling this season to recover from a torn left calf muscle suffered in the first training run of the year at his home base of Calgary. Lori never complains. If anything, he apologizes. When he finished fourth at the 1992 Olympics in Albertville, France, he begged Canada's pardon for missing the bronze by a tenth of a second. Lueders' crew for Nagano--like Lori, he will race in both two- and four-man sleds--is an eclectic mix. Dave MacEachern of Charlottetown, P.E.I., pushed Lueders to four victories in five two-man races last season, including a test run of Nagano's 1,360-m, 15-turn track, dubbed the Spiral. Ricardo Greenidge of Ottawa is a former track champion at 200 m. Jack Pyc of Calgary has ridden with Lueders since the two were juniors and has 21 international medals. Ken Leblanc of Beaverton, Ont., has returned to the sport after five years away--part of the time spent behind bars for threatening a witness at the 1992 murder trial of his younger brother Bryan. Leblanc's start speed and his temper are both explosive; some sledders think his personality is the best counterweight to Lueders' icy demeanor. Canada hasn't won an Olympic medal in bobsledding since Vic Emery of Montreal took the gold in four-man at Innsbruck, Austria, in 1964. Lueders has the best shot at ending that drought. Already this season he's knocked off such stars as Germany's five-time world champion Christoph Langen and 1997 world combined champion Gunther Huber of Italy. Some people may think Lueders is frosty, but bobsledding is, after all, a competition on ice.
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anada's best medal hopes in olympic bobsledding can be judged
to run hot and cold. They are, in fact, embodied in the same
man: Pierre Lueders, 27, of Edmonton, reigning World Cup
champion in the two-man sled and a formidable entry in the
four-man event. Young, efficient and methodical, Lueders is the
current hotshot on the World Cup circuit. At the first World Cup
stop of this Olympic season in Calgary, Alta., Lueders sped to
victories in both the two-man and four-man races. In four World
Cup stops this season, he has driven to four gold medals and one
bronze. Over a six-year career, Canada's best bobsledder has
earned 27 World Cup medals, including 15 golds.