Best U.S. Luge Team Has Great Expectations

LAKE PLACID, N.Y. - What's it gonna be? Gold? Silver? Bronze?

The U.S. Olympic luge team has great expectations.

"This is the best team we've ever fielded for the Olympics. Definitely," said Duncan Kennedy, this country's top male slider and No. 2 in the world behind Austria's Markus Prock.

Luge, which was added to the Winter Olympics at Innsbruck, Austria, in 1964, comes from the French word for sled and originated in Switzerland in 1883. Lugers ride aboard 50-pound sleds lying on their backs, feet-first, and slide down a banked sheer ice course at speeds approaching 90 mph.

Although the United States has yet to win an Olympic medal of any sort in luge, interest in the sport has grown remarkably since the 1980 Lake Placid Games.

"In 1979-80, we just sent a couple of teams over to Europe for a couple of short trips," said Dwight Bell, president of the U.S. Luge Association. "We had a budget of about $50,000. It was just peanuts."

Not any more. There are about 500 sliders in the program today, and Bell estimates his quadrennial budget for Albertville at $6 million.

The return on the investment has been impressive. In the past five years, the U.S. team has consistently placed in the top 10 in international competition. In 1988 at Calgary, it recorded its best Olympic finish in history - a sixth place in the women's singles by Bonny Warner.

Myler, who lost the World Cup title by a single point this season to Susi Erdmann of Germany, and Kennedy, have trained at the Mount Van Hoevenberg luge run near Lake Placid since 1980 and head the U.S. team, one that is expected to win a medal, if not at Albertville, then at Lillehammer, Norway, in 1994.

"It's going to be the best luge team that the U.S. has ever had," U.S. Olympian Tim Wiley said. "There are expectations for a medal. We can get this sport a lot of attention."

In at least one way, luge needs it. When the World Cup circuit stopped at Mount Van Hoevenberg in mid-January, many of the sport's top names were missing, including World Cup champions Prock and Erdmann.

"They don't like this track at all," Kennedy said. "I don't blame them. The track's way outdated. It's not really worth it to them. They've made it much better than it used to be, but you can't save this track."

So just what's wrong with it?

"Everything," Kennedy said. "The design is fine, it's actually pretty nice. But the actual construction of the track is horrible."

Sections of the run gradually came out of alignment during the 1980s, due in part to its hasty construction. In the past two years, New York's Olympic Regional Development Authority, which operates and maintains the facility, has spent more than $3 million on improvements.

The U.S. needs at least one more track to continue to progress. Teams customarily trade track time with each other, but since Lake Placid is the least desirable run, getting time elsewhere has been an obstacle.

"A lot of time we just can't get track time," Myler said. "They just won't give it to us."

"We max out the track time every year," Bell said. "We generally get the time we want, but we always have to fight it out a little harder. It's a factor. We don't have the leverage we'd like to have. It's amazing what we've done with what we've got. How many lugers can we have when we have only one track?"

Another track is in the works. Although Salt Lake City lost its bid for the 1998 Winter Games, city officials still plan to construct a luge run.

Construction of the facility, which will accommodate both luge and bobsled racing, is slated to begin in April 1994 and finish in September 1995.

Bell said he would eventually like to see three or four tracks in the U.S. - Germany alone has four of the 15 internationally certified runs in the world - but there are no plans for a third at this stage.

A new track? Kennedy can't wait.

"This is just the start," he said. "This program has been building for a few years now. We're just hitting the tip of the iceberg."

------------- FOCUS ON LUGE -------------

SCHEDULE: -- Men's singles: Feb. 9, 10. -- Women's singles: Feb. 11-12. -- Men's doubles: Feb. 14.

MEN'S

GOLD-MEDAL PICKS: -- Singles: Markus Prock, Austria -- Doubles: Raffl/Huber, Italy

WOMEN'S

GOLD-MEDAL PICK: -- Singles: Susi Erdmann, Germany.