Turn 13 Unlucky for U.S. : Luge: Warren and Myler blow medal chances with mishaps. Italy’s Weissensteiner leads women after two runs.

It’s known as bokkerittet in Norwegian.

The ride of the billy goat or ram.

If U.S. sliders have their own descriptions for Turn 13 of the Winter Olympics luge course, none are printable.

On the same turn where Duncan Kennedy lost control Monday, Erin Warren and Cammy Myler blew their medal chances in the women’s first two runs Tuesday.

“Now you know why they don’t put a 13 on elevators,” said Dmitry Feld, media representative for U.S. Luge.

Warren experienced a frightening crash in the first heat, but suffered only bruises and ice burns. She was disqualified, however, for not finishing the run.

Myler, who won the last World Cup race of a season in which she finished fifth overall, banged both walls coming out of 13 in the second heat Tuesday and was a distant 11th before today’s final two heats.

“I’m certainly not happy or excited about it, but I feel I did the best I could,” she said, the pressure of the Olympics compounded by her brother Tim’s battle with colon cancer in an Albany, N.Y., hospital.

Bethany Calcaterra-McMahon of the United States, in her first Olympics, had two clean runs and is 13th, the equivalent of another time zone when compared to the leader, Gerda Weissensteiner of Italy.

Weissensteiner, fourth in the 1992 Olympics, set a course record in the first heat and emerged from the second with a 25/100ths of a second lead over Susi Erdmann of Germany. Two Austrians, Andrea Tagwerker and Angelika Neuner, are third and fourth, respectively.

Warren’s first Olympics ended abruptly after only 40 seconds but the 23-year-old St. Lawrence University student subscribed to Kennedy’s let-it-all-out philosophy.

“In ‘92, I didn’t risk anything and didn’t make the team,” she said. “I’ve had a change of attitude. Sometimes it doesn’t hurt to die in the fire.

“I mean, it’s a positive for me the way I drove the course. I was relaxed and aggressive. I’m disappointed, but I would be more disappointed if I had made a stupid error from being nervous.

“It’s consoling to know I was going fast.”

Warren’s splits projected to a first-heat finish in the top five or six.

Kennedy, watching her run on TV, said she did what he had done.

“She went in (to 13) too low and was pulled up (into the high bank of the curve) by the centrifugal force,” he said. “At that point the sled is so light there’s no way to control it, and she slammed down against the left side of the wall (coming out of the curve).

“It’s the highest-speed part of the course and very difficult. The straightaway between 12 and 13 is so short that even if you drive 12 properly, it tends to put you into 13 too low.”

Warren crashed on the same curve in the Lillehammer Cup last fall but said she wasn’t thinking of that or of Kennedy’s crash 24 hours earlier.

She endorsed Kennedy’s account of the accident but said, “I really don’t think any part of this course is that difficult. I went into 13 too low is all, and that happens.”

The sled tipped over as she slammed off the wall and rode on Warren’s back as she slid face down through the long straightaway into 14, where the sled slid free as Warren lay motionless in the middle of the turn.

“You can’t fight it,” she said of her long slide.

“All you can do is relax and wait to slow down. I was just stunned from hitting my head on the ice a lot.”

And the sled?

“The sled is fine,” she said. “I was the one on the bottom.”

Myler’s training runs were among the field’s best until Monday, when she watched Kennedy crash, then hit the wall herself during a final training trip through 13.

That didn’t stay with her, she insisted, but she acknowledged being inexplicably tense in both heats, never matched her training or World Cup speeds and lost what she had in the second heat when she hit the walls leaving 13.

“I just want to do better tomorrow,” Myler said disconsolately, the high of serving as U.S. flag bearer in opening ceremonies of her third Olympics having faded some.

Calcaterra-McMahon, 19 and in her first year of senior luge competition, is likely to have many tomorrows.

“I want to do well like everybody else, but I’m treating this like a learning experience for ‘98,” she said, adding of her clean runs:

“Everyone treats 13 differently. I held the line today, but it’s easy to lose.”

In three days of luge competition, however, only one non-American slider has crashed in 13. Greta Sebald of Greece lost it in the first heat Tuesday, but held onto her sled.

She crossed the finish line more off than on, but was eligible to continue. She trails Weissensteiner by 56 seconds, bitten by bokkerittet.