Rule Britannia--for Now

A Britisher invented the bobsled. In 1890, Wilson Smith nailed two toboggans together and invited three friends along for a hair-raising ride down a mountain at St. Moritz. Capital idea, decided the Italians, the Swiss and the Americans, who added steel runners, steering wheels, crash helmets, specially constructed bobsled runs, speeds up to 90 m.p.h.--and took turns dominating the sport. The U.S. won five championships in the 1930s and '40s, and Italy's great steersman, Eugenic Monti, led his team to eight world titles (both two-man and four-man) in seven years.

Now Britannia rules again. In the 1964 Olympics, Britain's Antony J. D. Nash, 28, a frustrated sports-car racer (his dad said no to a Maserati, yes to a bobsled), shocked everybody by beating Monti for the two-man gold medal. Monti thereupon decided to retire, and last week Tony Nash was back at St. Moritz with his brakeman, Robin Dixon, to defend his title of best bobsledder in the world.

Into the Horseshoe. Clomping slowly down the mile-long track before each of his four runs, he examined the icy surface centimeter by centimeter--looking for any new crack or bump that could cut a precious hundredth of a second from his time, calculating the height at which he would take each of the 16 corners. Then, cautiously, Nash began to feel out the course. Scorning a steering wheel, handling the runner ropes with the iron hands of a jockey, he zipped through the first run in 1 min. 18.49 sec., the second in 1 min. 18.96 sec.--enough to give him a 1/3sec. lead over Rinaldo Ruatti in the No. 1 Italian sled.

Confident now, Nash turned on the speed. Plunging straight down the chute, he ripped into the 180DEG Horseshoe Corner, swung high on its sheer wall, then dropped surely down to the narrow, slotted straightaway to pick up extra speed. His time for the run: a course record, 1 min. 16.94 sec. But Nash was not through. On his last run he sliced another .03 sec. off his own record.

That gave him a 3 sec. victory over Ruatti--which in bobsledding is like lapping the field.

The one team that seemed likely to challenge Nash did not even get into the final competition at St. Moritz because it was having all kinds of trouble ironing the bugs out of a secret weapon. The team was from the U.S., and its secret was a pair of $70,000 sleds, designed and built by General Motors. For years, the best competition bobs have come from an Italian blacksmith named Evaldo D'Andrea, who produces 20 handcrafted, slipper-shaped Podar sleds a year, at prices ranging from $1,300 (for a two-man "boblet") to $1,575 (for a four-man model). Two years ago, a U.S. Air Force general with a yen for bobsledding suggested to some G.M. executives that it was time to end the Podar monopoly. G.M. was only too happy to try.

Silent as a Ghost. The G.M. sleds resemble the Podars about as much as a Corvette does a Corvair. The innovations include shock absorbers and sports-car-type "direct" steering (v. the Podar's rope-controlled runners). In trial runs at Lake Placid, N.Y., last month, a two-man G.M. sled beat the best time of a heavier, four-man Podar --and the four-man G.M. was faster yet. At St. Moritz last week, astonished European bobbers nicknamed the two man sled "the Ghost" because its rubber-seated runners merely whispered over the ice--while the Podars clattered and clanked.

The G.M. sled was too fast for its own good: on a practice run, Steersman Larry McKillip hit a rut and lost control coming out of Shamrock Bend, and smashed full force into the retaining wall. The sled's frame was hopelessly bent, and McKillip bruised an arm. The solution seemed obvious: slow down. But that didn't work, either: Steersman James Hickey took the four-man G.M. sled into Devil's Dyke so slowly that it could not hold the wall. The sled dropped like a stone from the face of the curve, and the runners were damaged in the fall. As a final indignity, the U.S. wound up using an old Podar sled for the two-man race. Steersman McKillip leaped in feet first--and put one leg right through the steering wheel. At that point he decided that anything was the better part of valor, and quit.

Technique had bested the technicians. But watch out from now on. "For get the crashes," said Switzerland's two-time World Champion Franz Kapus. "When those Americans get themselves straightened out, they will definitely be the fastest in the world."

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