CALGARY, Alberta — Skeleton racing is a dangerous sport, but nobody expected the kind of head bonk suffered Saturday by American Chris Soule.
The daredevil sliders have been known to lose teeth or suffer broken bones or black eyes during skeleton mishaps. After all, they lie face-down and race face-forward on small sleds that routinely top 70 mph and occasionally smack into the sidewalls of the icy track.
But during Saturday's first-day competition of the 2001 Skeleton World Championships at the Canada Olympic Park, Soule had a painful collision with the media.
While on the ice at the starting line just before his second run of the day, he banged his head on a television camera extended out over the track on the end of a long boom.
"I was warming up and bouncing up and down and they had it right up over my head — and I hit it," said the slider from San Francisco, complaining that while the injury wasn't serious, it was distracting.
While Soule was rubbing his sore noggin, a pair of U.S. teammates were nosing toward a medal finish after the end of Saturday's two heats. A pair of Park City friends — Lincoln DeWitt and Tricia Stumpf — find themselves in third place in the men's and women's events, respectively, with Sunday's two final heats to go.
Leading the men's singles at the halfway point of the two-day championships are Austria's Martin Rettle with a two-run time of 1 minute, 54.37 seconds, and Canada's Jeff Pain, 1:54.86. DeWitt is in third at 1:54.92, while U.S. teammate Jim Shea Jr. is fourth at 1:55.10.
As for the women's competition, Great Britain's Alex Coomber is in first with a time of 1:57.81, followed by Canada's Michelle Kelly at 1:58.09 and Stumpf at 1:58.13.
On her first run, Stumpf set a new track record at 59.04 seconds. But it didn't last long. Kelly broke it on her own first run with 58.81, followed by Coomber's slide 58.75.
They are tops among the 35 men and 25 women participating in the world championships, making for a total of 120 runs Saturday.
At the time of his accident, Soule was without a helmet and wearing only a hooded liner similar to the top of a wet suit. Holding the top of his head, he growled and grunted, stomped on the track and angrily shed his warm-up suit. He stood silently for a moment as if to regain his composure and then roared as he started his second of two runs.
His time in the second heat was 57.94 seconds — almost a quarter-second slower than his first, making for a crucial deficit. He said he had hoped to move up a bit during the second run, but hitting the camera distracted him.
An official with the U.S. Bobsled and Skeleton Federation said he was told the hit was so hard that it broke the camera.
Soule said race officials offered him a chance to make another run, but he declined. The first two took so much out of him that "I didn't think that I'd be able to do a third run with the energy that I had," said Soule, who was in 15th place at 1:55.64.
Michael Gruenperger, head coach of the Austrian skeleton team, noted that his men owned fifth and ninth places as well as Rettle's first-place spot. "So it looks very good for us," he said. "We'll see tomorrow if we can take the title."
Asked which teams are most worrisome to him, he replied. "Oh, the Americans and the Canadian."
America's team is strong and "they are great favorites for Salt Lake City next year," Gruenperger said, referring to the 2002 Winter Olympics.
He cited the fact that the luge/bobsled/skeleton track at the Utah Olympic Park doubles as the Americans' home track, where the U.S. sliders have made countless runs since the track opened several years ago.
Asked to compare the Park City track with that of Calgary, Gruenperger said "the Park City is not so long as here in Calgary. It's a very nice track. It's an easy track. But it's very hard to slide very fast."
Spectators seemed to number fewer than 100 Saturday, leading one Canadian track official to quip that while the numerous spectators in Europe know all the skeleton athletes, the sliders know all the spectators at less-attended North American events.
Soule wasn't the only slider facing a mishap. In a remarkable display of quick thinking, French slider Phillippe Cavoret quickly recovered after he lost his footing starting his run. He fell to his left side but he kept his right hand on his sled. Immediately, he scrambled to his feet, straightened the sled and continued his run.
E-mail: bau@desnews.com