WINTER OLYMPICS : ONE MORE CHANCE : Bonny Warner’s Hopes for Luge Medal in ’84 Ended in a Wipeout; This Time, Things May Be Different

Luger Bonny Warner is looking to redeem herself in her own eyes this week in Calgary, Canada.

“I want to go away from that race knowing I had four perfect runs,” she said in a quiet moment during the 1988 Olympic trials here at the Olympic luge run at Mt. Van Hoevenberg.

Her performance in the 1984 Winter Olympics in Sarajevo, Yugoslavia, gave a hint of what could be. Now Warner is calling in her chips.

Sitting in a top-10 position after two runs at Sarajevo four years ago, Warner envisioned a fifth-place finish if she pulled out all the stops. But she crashed near the end of the run, eliminating all hope of the best U.S. finish in the sport.

“I was in eighth place, very close to fifth,” Warner recalled. “I could play it safe or I could take some risks. I took the choice and opted to go for the risk. I think I did what I had to do and it didn’t pay off. I think I learned a lot from that. I would do the same thing over again.”

While the odds for a first Olympic medal are still stacked against her and the rest of the U.S. team, at least they no longer are in triple-digits.

“I’m not a favorite nor is any one of us, but now we’re a medium shot, not a long shot,” she said of the U.S. Olympic luge team. “If I was going to have someone put their money down, I’d say go for an East German sweep.

“But if you want to double your money, go for the medium shot,” she said, grinning.

The payoffs have been coming in more frequently for Warner in a sport just beginning to gain an identity.

A new coach and sponsorship money for the team have brought luge from its infancy to early adolescence. Wolfgang Schaedler, once a highly ranked international slider in his native Liechtenstein, has brought competitive and technical know-how to a team just starting to slide with spirit.

NYNEX, a multimillion-dollar telecommunications company, signed on as luge’s major sponsor two years ago. Results were almost immediate. Starting with a World Cup bronze medal in 1986, individuals on the team won five in 1987, including its only gold, won by Warner in March.

Luge has an articulate spokesman in Warner. She is doing double duty to promote the obscure sport that U.S. Winter Olympic traditionalists have given no more than a roll of the eyes and a chuckle.

Since last spring, Warner has been on a roll of her own, striking gold at the Lake Placid World Cup in March.

For the first time last summer, Warner’s self-financed, self-started introductory luge camps actually made money.

“To me, a record-breaking run is just as rewarding as seeing someone else who’s just gotten into the sport,” the former Mt. Baldy resident said.

One of her Western States Luge Club alumni will compete in the Games in men’s doubles. Warner is tickled by the success of Steve Maher of Los Gatos, Calif., who started luging a year ago in one of Warner’s San Francisco Bay Area camps, where wheel sleds are driven around pylons on a sloping road.

Warner is a 1986 Stanford graduate with a journalism degree, which she will put to the test in Calgary when she does commentary for San Francisco’s KGO-TV after the luge event.

As a competitor at Mt. Van Hoevenberg in January, Warner put on a show that laid to rest all thoughts of parity on the women’s team.

She won 2 of 3 races in the trials, finishing second in the first race to 19-year-old Cammy Myler, the slider to watch in the future.

But the present belongs to Warner, who during the same trials broke the five-year-old American women’s track record not once, but twice, in one week.

She shared the wealth with the Mt. Van Hoevenberg track crew, an oft-forgotten lot of men in green who smooth the bumps and ruts on the 1,000-meter long icy track.

A case of beer wrapped in white paper and a ribbon awaited the men the day after the record was broken.

In a postrace interview, Warner said she knew conditions were perfect for a record-setting run. “I’ve wanted that for four years,” she said. “I looked at the ice today and knew.”

Warner is not one to give short shrift to intuition or to dreams.

“When she gets on a thought, on a track, she will see it to the end,” said Ron Rossi, assistant coach of the national luge team. “And I don’t mean that in the negative sense. As a person, away from the sport, she’s a pretty caring individual.”

Teammates agreed, saying that Warner does not hesitate to help them out, whether it be with advice, equipment or encouragement.

Warner said she considers sliding secondary to the people involved.

“It’s the people that make it special,” she said. “I do this sport certainly for the exhilaration. But when you (slide down a track) 2,000 times, the charm fades. I love it, but if it was just me and the track . . . “

Still, at 25, she doesn’t plan on retiring for a while.

“I’ve worked so hard to finally get here,” she said. “I’m not going to leave.”

Warner’s hunger for a medal is nourished by those around her. There is no lack of team camaraderie despite the individuality of the sport. All are bound by the love for the speed and rush generated by careening down a four-foot-wide ice chute feet-first on a sled with no brakes.

Warner has even been known, every other year or so, to take her sled to the higher men’s start to increase her speed. It is about 200 meters up from the women’s start and roughly translates to an increase of about 10 m.p.h. over 1,000 meters. From the women’s start, sleds travel at about 60 m.p.h. on a track 740.5 meters--839 yards--long.

“The track is scary for the men because it’s dangerous,” she said of the twisting, 15-curve Mt. Van Hoevenberg run. “We are getting very fast.”

The difference between the men’s and women’s track is like night and day, Warner said. “It’s fun. I like the speed.”

Warner may like the speed, but she has sometimes had trouble handling the pressure of this touchy sport, where the tiniest of mistakes prove costly in a big way.

Before the next day’s final heat of the Lake Placid 1987 World Cup, Warner was in first place and was asked if she felt any pressure.

“If I stay relaxed, I have a good shot of staying in first,” she replied at the time. “I don’t choke anymore.”

Because of poor weather, the third heat was not held, and Warner was declared the winner. But observers got the feeling Warner had licked that choking feeling anyway.

“I think she feels she choked in Sarajevo when she crashed on the third heat,” Rossi said. “She felt that she was very tight on the sled.”

Then the Warner determination kicked in, said Rossi.

“As a result of Sarajevo, she beefed up her mental preparation to be better prepared for it,” he said, explaining how athletes use pre-visualization and special breathing techniques to relax.

Warner still gets nervous before big races, he said. “But she hides it well,” he added.

There won’t be any hiding at Calgary, where, as a returning Olympian, Warner will be the focus of U.S. reporters in the sport. That, though, won’t be as much a problem as Warner’s own expectations, she said.

“In 1984, I was kind of like the wide-eyed kid, soaking it up,” Warner said of her first Games. “Now, I’m not the salty old veteran by any means, but I’m going in there with a job to do.”

With some perfect runs and a little bit of luck, Warner may hit the jackpot.

“In 1984, I had no illusions of finishing in the top three,” she said. “The program and equipment just weren’t there yet. (Now,) it’s no secret that it’s possible.”