Mater Dei Graduate Taking a Fling at the ’92 Winter Olympics : Bobsledding: What began as a lark has turned into a serious pursuit for UCLA decathlete Chris Conrad.

Chris Conrad had his doubts, the kind of doubts that will crinkle a nose and turn a mouth downward at the corners.

“There must be something fishy about this, “ he thought.

Run a few sprints, do a vertical jump, heave a shotput underhanded and complete another leaping drill and you get an expenses-paid trip to the Olympic training center at Lake Placid, N.Y.?

Work out there for a couple of weeks and go to Germany?

Take a semester off of school, tour Europe and find yourself one step from the 1992 Winter Olympics at Albertville, France?

Well, OK . . . Introducing the sport of bobsledding, folks.

“Not knowing anything about bobsledding, I figured there have to be some people who do this seriously,” said Conrad, a UCLA decathlete who went to Mater Dei High School and attended UC Irvine for a year before transferring.

Some people are, but they are not the ones who make the U.S. national team. It is peopled by the likes of Olympic hurdler Edwin Moses of Newport Beach. Among those who’ve tried to make it were Willie Gault, who caused a controversy when he joined the Olympic team shortly before the Calgary Games in 1988, and Herschel Walker, who spent a day in Lake Placid last week demonstrating that he can push a sled with the best of them.

The team is made up of elite athletes, whether they be stars of the NFL or the track circuit, a one-time UCLA safety named Jeff Woodard or a softball star named James (Bubba) Womack from Brunswick, Ga., who never played college sports.

It requires no familiarity with ice, but demands sprinter’s speed, strength and technique. Conrad, 21, is one of 12 men chosen for the 1990-91 USA bobsled team from a first-time national talent search, a scouring of the nation to seek out well-conditioned athletes who might be able to bring the United States its first Olympic medal in the sport since a 1956 bronze.

It began, of course, as a lark.

Conrad and UC Irvine’s Marc Kallick, a couple of college decathletes, were participating in a track meet at Cal State Long Beach late last spring trying to improve their scores when they saw a flier: Try out for the U.S. bobsledding team training camp.

“It was kind of funny at first--the Road to Albertville,” Conrad said, laughing.

They went to a tryout at Rancho Santiago College in June, one of 12 national sites where six-item physical fitness tests were conducted.

They ran three sprints--30, 60 and 100 meters. Their vertical jump was measured, as was their distance in five consecutive hops. They tossed a shotput, two-handed.

“Excellent for decathletes and the kind of training you do,” Conrad said.

Conrad, Kallick, former Irvine sprinter Will Stolpe and former Fullerton College and Texas Tech track athlete and wide receiver Clifford Mack of Laguna Niguel were among about 100 athletes invited to Lake Placid as a result of the national tryouts.

Stolpe decided not to make the trip. The other three left in late August for a week of training, a week break and a week of competition. Conrad made the team, after finishing among the top competitors in the National Push Championships, a dry-track simulation of the beginning of a bobsled race.

“I thought I’d go back and stay at the Olympic training center, get a little of the Olympic flavor,” Conrad said.

But he kept excelling.

“It was surprise after surprise for me,” he said. “I went in cold. My whole life, I’d probably watched less than an hour of bobsledding on TV. . . . It’s funny, it is funny, but it’s serious, too. They’re real serious.”

Now he is one of them.

“I got more kidding before I went than since I came back,” Conrad said. “Everyone’s real excited for me.”

He will leave Oct. 20 for Calgary, Canada, and continue on to a European tour that will include competitions at Innsbruck, Austria, Sarajevo, Yugoslavia, and Albertville.

“It’s been a weird six weeks,” Conrad said last week after a solitary workout at UC Irvine, where he trains while living at his parents’ house in San Juan Capistrano. “It sure is boggling my mind.”

He will skip fall classes at UCLA, but said he plans to return for the next quarter in order to maintain his eligibility and compete during the track season next spring.

After an injury-marred season last year in which he fell about 200 points shy of the provisional qualifying mark of 7,250 points for the decathlon in the NCAA championships, he is determined to make the NCAA field before his eligibility expires.

“That’s my goal,” he said.

Conrad, who is 6 feet 1, 180 pounds and will be a junior this season, has long jumped 23 feet 11, thrown the javelin 201 feet, and has a personal best of 10.88 seconds in the 100--although he was timed at 10.77 in the bobsled tryout.

He will return to Lake Placid sometime next year for the Olympic trials, which have not yet been formally announced. U.S. bobsled officials said they hope to select a team of 12 in March from a group of about 20 candidates.

A U.S. bobsled official said making the team this year does not make Conrad a lock for the Olympic team, partly because of the possibility of a late influx of elite athletes from other sports, such as Walker. But he is no outsider, either.

“I think it looks real good,” Conrad said.

Until then, he will enjoy the experience of international competition. He has been assigned to a sled with Moses, Womack and driver Brian Shimer--three-fourths of the team that set a track record in winning the recent International Push Championships at Konigsee, Germany.

It all started with a few sprints, some jumping and a shotput toss at Rancho Santiago College. Before long he’ll be hobnobbing and bobbing with Moses, and perhaps Gault and Walker before he’s done.

“It’s a good feeling,” Conrad said. “They’re excellent, excellent athletes. They’re elite athletes and well-known. All I can say is it’s good to be able to compete and not get blown away.”