Sport: Beware Zigzag and Shady

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"Eighty-one at Zigzag! Eighty-one at Zigzag!" The announcer, alerted by spotters, booms a coded warning over the public address system. Even before his echoing voice has died away, safety and medical personnel sprint into action. A bobsled has crashed on the Lake Placid Olympic run, the longest, fastest, most difficult and dangerous racing course of its kind in the world. Zigzag, an S turn that slams sleds at nearly 70 m.p.h. through two 60° turns in 335 ft., has claimed yet another victim.

Since the bobsled run opened for trial runs in December, there have been 55 crashes along the mile-long course with its high-banked turns, lightning-fast straightaways and narrow chutes. Miraculously, the worst injuries have been only a couple of broken collarbones and one broken ankle. But for all its speed and treachery, the Lake Placid run is a bobsledder's dream. Says Jim Gragg, manager of the bobsled run recreation area: "The drivers have the greatest respect for this run. They know that it's dangerous, but they also know that they can run it very fast."

As speeds increase, the "aperture" (the correct angle of approach into the turns) decreases and drivers of the two-and four-man sleds must steer onto the proper line within a fraction of a second or risk a crash. In one turn, dubbed "Shady," the sleds are whipped through a 150° turn that drops 36 ft. The resulting slingshot effect pushes the sleds up to 75 m.p.h. and subjects their crews to 4.5-G stresses (astronauts experience 5 Gs at blast-off). According to one driver, crewmen have blacked out on the Lake Placid course.

With speeds so high and stresses so intense, bobsledding now requires well-trained athletes, not the hell-for-leather but paunchy types who once populated the sport. Before restrictions in the early '50s, on the combined weight of sled and crew, bobsledders simply loaded their machines with beef, using the extra weight to build momentum. Recalls Nathan Pratt, who daily hand-sculpts the course's corners by shaving ice in one spot or building it up in another: "In the old days, they used to train by drinking gallons of beer. Sometimes I'd have to help the guys into their sleds."

No more. With the weight limitations, the start has become all-important; four-hundredths of a second of extra speed through the first 50 meters can become a full second's advantage by the bottom of the run. As a result, today's bobsledders are chosen for being fleet, not fat. None have been more shrewdly picked than Willie Davenport, 36, who won a gold medal in the high hurdles in the 1968 Summer Games. Last fall the bobsledders persuaded him that his speed might help the team. Says Davenport: "Why, the first time I'd ever seen a bobsled was right after Thanksgiving."

Davenport learned so fast that he became a member of the top U.S. sled, as had Jeff Gadley, 24, a former decathlon man. Davenport and Gadley will be the first two American blacks ever to compete in the Winter Olympics. If they win, giving the U.S. its first gold medal in bobsledding since 1948, Davenport will gain a further distinction: he will become only the second man in history to win gold medals in both the Winter and Summer Olympics.*