Saturday, February 16, 2002
Possum player
By TERRY JONES -- Edmonton Sun
SALT LAKE CITY -- Pierre Lueders says he's playing possum.
"We were not going to show our cards,'' he said.
Good thing.
If he's not, then he's not going to come close to repeating the feat of winning a gold medal in the two-man bobsled at the Nagano Olympic Winter Games four years ago.
In order Lueders was 10th, 24th, 11th, ninth, 16th and 10th in his six training runs, running two-a-day over the last three days.
The first two runs of the four-run event go today.
ASLEEP AT THE WHEEL
And even if he wasn't playing possum, you can throw away the 24th-place run, says the Edmonton pilot of Canada 1 because he fell asleep at the wheel.
"That was our second run on the first night and it was at 11:30 at night. I'm usually in bed and sound asleep at that time of evening. I drove down half-asleep.''
Lueders says bobsledders are becoming a bit like World Cup skiers. They'll use different training runs to concentrate on different sections of the course.
"Thursday we were concentrating on the middle, on corners five to 10. We had coaches on corners five, seven and 10.''
The training runs convinced Lueders the Olympic bobsled races will be won at the top end.
"The starts multiply by two or three times what is to follow,'' he said.
"It's so steep. And it's so short.
"You get to corner six ...''
The race is over.
'GAME-DAY GUY'
Lueders says he and his new pusher, Giulio Zardo of Montreal, haven't been burning themselves out on the starts.
Zardo, put together with Lueders for the last two World Cup races, events which put Lueders on top of one podium and earned a third-place finish in the other, is a study.
"He's doing what he's usually doing through training. Absolutely nothing,'' laughed Lueders.
"He's a game-day guy.''
It's highly unusual to come to the Olympics and not have an up-to-the-last-minute bobsled controversy. But there isn't one.
"The head coach made his decision and that's it, the way it should be,'' said Lueders of the new guy in his sled.
The pilot who won the gold with Dave MacEachern in Nagano, says he is just as optimistic on the property here as he was when he returned to Edmonton after his two successes in Europe.
"I'm pretty excited.
"I think we're going to do well.''
2002 Games Bobsleigh Coverage
