WINTER OLYMPICS : Notebook : Selection of Willie Gault Is Divisive

A bobsledder blocked from the U.S. Olympic team by Chicago Bears football player Willie Gault says he wasn’t beaten by the better man but by the better-known one.

“I feel cheated,” Don Lavigne, a bobsledder who postponed his senior year at Harvard to compete for the team, told the Albany Times Union. “I have taken the risks and made the sacrifices and commitments, and presumably had qualified.”

An arbitration hearing has been set before Andrew Linscott of the American Arbitration Assn. this afternoon in Boston. Alan Rose, the athlete’s Boston-based lawyer, said representatives of the U.S. Olympic Committee and Bobsled Federation were expected to testify by telephone.

Lavigne took part in October’s Olympic Trials in Winterberg, West Germany, with the understanding that eventual team members must first compete there. He was named to the team and even fitted for a uniform after the trials, according to Rose.

However, Gault, a wide receiver, joined bobsled training in January after the Bears were eliminated from National Football League playoffs.

“Virtually at the last minute someone comes along, and Don was bumped off the team,” Rose said. “It makes it sound as if everything that happened before doesn’t matter. He (Gault) just seemed to show up uninvited in January and was selected for the team.”

Gault was named as side-pusher on an alternate four-man bobsled team. But Lavigne said the actual times with him helping push the sled were five-hundredths of a second faster than with Gault.

However, the Federation has previously said Gault is the better side-pusher and that it had the authority to place him on the team.

The International Olympic Committee struck a blow for sexual equality, erasing from its constitution a clause that could have restricted participation of women in the Games.

The panel’s 93rd session voted in Calgary to delete from the Olympic Charter Rule 28, which made participation by women athletes conditional on approval by international sports federations and the IOC itself.

The charter contains no such restrictive language for men.

Paul Hildgartner, an Italian luge racer looking for his third Olympic gold medal, has been carefully hiding a new sled he expects will help him to that goal.

“It is a revolutionary sled. We have been testing it for months and I expect great times,” Hildgartner said at the start of the first luge training runs at the Winter Olympics which will begin Saturday.

Hildgartner will not show the sled to anyone until Friday, the last day of training. He said he is afraid other competitors will be able to copy its new design and runners in time for the first competitive runs next Sunday and Monday.

The sled has a new body to improve aerodynamics but the main change is the position of the blades, which will notably increase the speed, Hildgartner said.

“I expect to gain half a second per run in competition,” he said as he sandpapered the blades of his traditional sled. “It is really great.”

Raimond Dombrovskis, a U.S. biathlete, left Seattle for Calgary to try to prove that he has recovered from an emergency appendectomy last month and should be allowed to compete.

But coach Sigvart Bjontegaard said there will be no time-trial, selection races in Calgary. Dombrovskis had been ranked third on the seven-man team decided at the U.S. trials.

U.S. speed skater Bonnie Blair was among those predicting that world record will fall during the Winter Games.

“This is the fastest track in the world,” said Blair, a former world record-holder at 500 meters and considered a top medal prospect at the sprint distances. “I think pretty much every world record will be broken once the races begin.”

This is the first time speed skating will be held indoors at an Olympics.

The chief of the Blackfoot Indians distanced himself from a threat by some band members to disrupt the Olympic torch run when it reaches Calgary Saturday, the day the Winter Games open.

“The Blackfoot support the Olympics and support the city of Calgary,” Chief Strater Crowfoot said from the band’s reservation, 35 miles east of Calgary.

Scott Hamilton, who captured the Olympic title in Sarajevo in 1984 and the world title four times from 1981 to 1984, will be presented with the Jacques Favart Trophy during the World Figure Skating Championships in Budapest next month. It is only the fourth time the award has been given.