The "Cigarski" Is Smoking

They had never sent a bobsled team to the Olympics before, yet at Sarajevo the Soviets not only showed up with a squad of twelve formidably well-drilled musclemen, but were instantly serious contenders for a medal. Kibitzers buzzed all week over the reason: three radically designed sleds that were both red and revolutionary. The Soviet bobs, guarded to prevent close inspection and whisked away by truck after practice runs, looked like sharks, or cigars or--the nickname that finally stuck--"cigarskis."

They were conventional in length, height and weight (two-man bobs may not weigh more than 858 lbs., including both crewmen). But the sled bodies were made in one piece, rather than in two as are other bobs, and they were much narrower than normal, with dramatic fins that jutted from each side of their noses and flanks. These allowed the sleds to meet the letter if not the spirit of the regulation that requires a minimum width of 34 in. Other sleds also have stubby finlike projections at the nose to stabilize the machine, and while those on the cigarskis appeared to be larger than normal, it was their added flank fins that stunned other sledders. Critics cautioned that the innovative fins could cause a careening bob to dig into the track, leading to a wrenching flip that might kill the crewmen.

The cigarskis were known to be surprisingly fast, but very hard to steer. In their-- first public appearance last November, at Winterberg, West Germany, they rolled several times. Before a race at Cortina, the Soviet team withdrew after two crashes. The U.S. and Swiss teams were interested enough, nevertheless, to have copies made. All were rejected for use in these Olympics, as their drivers did not know how to control them.

The Soviets persisted. A mysterious knuckle joint in the sled's suspension was said to make up for some of the stiffness of the one-piece body. "It's a good sled," one member of their team said last week, and then added, with a grin, "when it stays on the track." The cigarskis did stay on the track in practice. They are so speedy on the smooth curves of new artificial tracks, like the one at Sarajevo, that one official of the International Bobsled and Tobogganing Federation thought they had won the technological war. "The Soviets have taken an exciting sport and turned it into an icy gray science," he said.

Not really. The East Germans, who have dominated bobsledding for the past several years, had quietly made some innovations of their own, notably a highly stable independent front suspension on a fairly conventional-looking sled, and their superb No. 2 team of Wolfgang Hoppe and Dietmar Schauerhammer took the gold medal Saturday. Another East German bob took the silver medal. The Soviets and one of their cigarskis won the bronze, however. For their team and all the others (including the Americans, who dragged in a dreary 15th), the next move was back to the drawing board. It is a good bet that unless the bobsled federation outlaws the new design on safety grounds, as doubters have threatened to do, some of the sketches that result will look a lot like the cigarski.