CALGARY, Alberta — When the last spray of shaved ice flew from the bobsled runners Friday, Swiss 1 had finished a fraction of a second ahead of top-ranked and previously undefeated USA 1 for first in the 2001 Women's Bobsled World Championships.
Second place went to two Utah women — driver Jean Racine of Park City and her brakeman, Jen Davidson of Layton — who were trying to find a silver lining in their silver medals.
Their combined time for two heats was less than a heartbeat behind the gold medalists from Switzerland in the event at the Canada Olympic Park that featured 28 teams from across the globe.
Top finishers will compete in the 2002 Salt Lake Winter Games.
The Swiss 1 bobsled team's combined timed for two heats was 1 minute, 55.08 seconds, while USA 1 came in at 1:55.10. Racine and Davidson's first run Friday set a new track record at 57.32 seconds, but it didn't stand for long. A few minutes later, the Swiss 1 team of driver Francoise Burdet and brakeman Kathrina Sutter beat that by 0.01 of a second.
Amazingly, the two rivals were separated by exactly the same amount in the second heat, with USA 1 at 57.78 and Swiss 1 at 57.77.
With the second Swiss run, a huge cheer went up from the hundreds of spectators, athletes and coaches who braved the biting cold.
It must have seemed a crushing loss for many Americans here, because Racine and Davidson recently took their fifth victory of the 2000-2001 World Cup season, and entered the championships as the world's top-ranked twosome.
Still, head coach Bill Tavares seemed elated with their showing. "Silver medal! Silver medal!" he exulted, standing at the top of the track.
The loudest cheers from the partisan home crowd were for Canadians Christina Smith and Cherie Whelan, who finished in fifth place.
Afterwards, the top medalists said they were looking forward to competing in the 2002 Salt Lake Games.
"I think we put a really solid performance together today, and I'm happy," the 22-year-old Racine said. "Of course, we came out here hoping for the gold."
She noted that, as far as she knows, no previous winner of the world bobsled championships has gone on to take gold in the following year's Winter Games.
"So I think maybe this was a good thing — we're not jinxing ourselves," she said. "We're going to stick to our goal, which of course is a gold in 2002, and hopefully it's going to happen for us."
Racine, a Michigan native who has lived in Park City for three years, added: "It was so cold today that the ice was very unstable — meaning that it was really skiddish, it made it difficult to control," she said.
Another ice woe was caused by the zero-degree temperature, which made the ice "incredibly sticky up at the top," said Racine, explaining that it slowed down everyone's start times.
The 28-year-old Davidson said USA 1 ran well. "We pushed well, we slid well," she said.
Because of the intense cold, the USA 1 sled sported different runners than it usually does, "runners that are better suited for these cold conditions," Davidson said.
Speaking in her native German, Burdet said she and Sutter have worked together for five years. "Today for us was a big goal and we fought to the last moment to reach this goal," she said, "and we got it together."
Bronze medals went to Germany's driver Susi Erdmann and brakeman Tonja Hess, with a combined time of 1:55.40. A former luge slider, Erdmann said bobsled is "a totally different sport . . . I need to work a lot to do better in this sport."
The competition Friday included three teams from the United States, two from Switzerland, three from Germany, three from Canada, two from the Netherlands, three from Great Britain, two from Japan and one each from Sweden, Russia, Hungary, Jamaica, Romania, Australia, American Samoa, Poland, Iceland and New Zealand.
Men's world bobsled championships were held last Sunday in St. Moritz, Switzerland. First place went to Germany's Christoph Langen and his crew of Markus Zimmerman, Sven Peter and Alex Metzger.
The top American men were the crew of Mike Dionne of Alpharetta, Ga., and John Kasper, Thornton, Iowa; Doug Sharp (Jeffersonville, Md.) and Earl Shepherd (Pittsburgh). They came in ninth.
World skeleton championships are up next at Calgary, with men's and women's races Saturday and Sunday.
E-mail: bau@desnews.com