‘94 WINTER OLYMPICS / LILLEHAMMER : ‘Grandma Luge’ a Winner of Sorts : Women: Americans finish 11th and 12th as Italian wins. Abernathy, 40, becomes a champion in spirit.

The woman known as “Grandma Luge” finished 20th in the Winter Olympics on Wednesday. She was more than five seconds behind the winner, Gerda Weissensteiner of Italy, but it was another victory of the spirit.

“It feels great to finish in the top 20 here,” said Anne Abernathy, who is 40 and represents a bastion of winter sports known as the Virgin Islands.

“Most of the girls are half my age. I mean, if you said I’d be doing this when I was 40, I’d have said you’re out of your mind.

“Heck, I’d have said that about doing it when I was 30, too. I started at the same time my coach retired, and we were the same age.

“When they announced my age at my first competition, he looked at me and thought they made a mistake. He was expecting 23, not 33.”

Abernathy moved from Florida to St. Thomas 12 years ago to pursue an entertainment career.

She does some singing, works for a computer company and works out in a gym that lacks air conditioning.

“I know sauna, not snow,” she said on a sub-zero morning.

She also spends five or six months on the luge circuit, paying her own way.

The dividends include three Olympics. Who would have believed it when she made a ski trip to Lake Placid, N.Y., when she was 28.

“I saw the bobsledders and thought they were crazy,” she said. “I saw the lugers and was hooked. I said, ‘I can do that.’ Two years later I tried it.

“My folks thought I got it out of my system in the first week. That was 12 years ago. After I raced for the first time at Calgary, my mom and I hugged and I said, ‘Mom, I did it.’ And she said, ‘Yeah, and now you never have to do it again.’

“I said, ‘But Mom, training for the world championships begins in two weeks.’ She walked away and didn’t talk to me for three months. My folks live near Washington (D.C.) and are retired. They think I should be, too.”

Far from it. She was ranked in the top 12 this year and finished seventh in a recent World Cup race. She survived four trips through the turn that unseated Duncan Kennedy and Erin Warren on Monday. Four sledders finished behind her.

“I had my head back and feet up,” she said. “I was going for it. People tell me my form is as good as anybody’s. I just have to improve my starts. I’ve got a lot of years left.

“Really,” she said. “I love it. It’s exciting, and there’s more to it than just the sport. I’ve seen the world.

“I trained in Sarajevo for three years and it hurts to see what’s happened there. I was in Latvia before it became an independent country. I was with the East and West German teams when the news came that the wall had come down.

“We were in the Munich airport, flying back from Latvia. I had East Germans on one side of me and the West Germans on the other. All of a sudden there was one country and one team and there were obviously mixed feelings because it would be harder to make the team, fewer positions, more difficult to come to the Olympics.

“It was kind of strange. You knew what they were thinking.”

Susi Erdmann of Germany won the silver Wednesday. Andrea Tagwerker of Austria took the bronze.

Weissensteiner, 16 years younger than the Virgin Islands’ representative, was fourth in the ’92 Olympics and is the reigning world champion. She had the fastest time in each heat, including a course record in the first.

The United States is still looking for its first luge medal, with only doubles left Friday.

Cammy Myler was a disappointing 11th and Bethany Calcaterra-McMahon 12th in her first Olympics. Both said they would try again in ’98.

Myler, who had surgery on her right shoulder to correct a series of dislocations after finishing fifth in the 1992 Olympics, will have similar surgery on her left shoulder in March. She said she was near tears when she called her mother in Albany, N.Y., Tuesday night after blowing her medal chances in the first two heats.

“Moms have a way of setting things right,” Myler said. “She reminded me that I have been to three Olympics, had been chosen by peers to carry the flag in the opening ceremonies and have had a lot of success around the world. She said it was natural to be a little disappointed but I had a lot of reasons to be proud, to feel good about myself.”

Anne Abernathy was also feeling good about herself. In fact, Grandma Luge said she was heading for a week or two of sailing on her 32-foot yacht. Tough sledding in the Virgin Islands.