‘94 WINTER OLYMPICS / LILLEHAMMER : What About Bobsled Wasn’t Fast Enough? : Two-man: U.S. teams are 12th and 14th after two runs despite having no major problems. Swiss are 1-2.

Monaco’s Prince Albert is 32nd. Jamaica’s Dudley Stokes of “Cool Runnings” fame is 24th.

Armenia is 37th, Bosnia-Herzegovina 35th, Trinidad 38th and American Samoa 42nd.

Heck, U.S. drivers Brian Shimer and Jim Herberich were leading two-thirds of the 43-team field after Saturday’s first two heats of two-man bobsled in the Winter Olympics.

It’s the third of the field they trail that represents the realistically insurmountable problem in today’s final two heats.

No Puerto Rico I or Virgin Islands I and II in that group.

Reto Goetschi, driver of Switzerland II, emerged from the first two heats with a lead of one-10th of a second over his more renowned countryman, Gustav Weder, the defending Olympic champion.

Gunther Huber of Italy, the 1993-94 World Cup champion, was third, .27 behind Goetschi.

Shimer and Herberich were 12th and 14th respectively, more than a second off the lead and reduced now to a goal of finishing in the top 10.

Neither blamed the Bo-Dyn sleds for the disappointing runs.

“The sled was running great, as it has all season,” said Herberich, who had been among the training-run leaders but was 15th after a 53.04 first heat in which he and brakeman Chip Minton hit the wall hard coming out of the infamous 13th turn.

Asked about pressure in his Olympic debut, the Harvard engineering graduate said he had slept and eaten well.

“Maybe I didn’t have enough jitters,” Herberich said. “Maybe I was so relaxed I wasn’t focused enough. I made some bad mistakes in the first heat. I thought I cleaned it up in the second, but the time wasn’t there. We’ve come a long way this year, but I’m obviously disappointed.”

Said Shimer, of USA II: “The sled was running better. I’m pleased with that. Coming in, I was worried we wouldn’t even be in the top 15, but we discovered a broken mounting yesterday and the team worked like crazy to get it fixed.”

There was another positive for the Shimer-Randy Jones team. The push didn’t come to shove, as some had feared.

In the latest little controversy for the U.S. sledders, Shimer had tried to dump his pusher and brakeman of the last two years in favor of Jeff Woodard of Randy Will’s team.

Will was eliminated in a Wednesday race-off with Shimer and Herberich for the two U.S. berths in two-man. Shimer, dissatisfied with his start times all season, enlisted Woodard as his pusher for the second of two training runs on Thursday.

His start time improved significantly, and Woodard was registered by the U.S. Bobsled Federation as his brakeman, only for the federation to realize that its selection procedures gave Jones the right to veto a change at that point.

Jones confirmed Saturday that he had exercised that veto, although he also said no one had ever told him he wasn’t competing, an interesting contradiction that didn’t jibe with the insistence by a federation official that he had been told.

“Why else would he exercise the veto?” the official said, adding that to take Woodard back out of the sled, the federation had to cite his strained quadriceps muscle, a legitimate but not sidelining injury, as evidenced by the Shimer-Woodard start time of Thursday.

“I came here to slide, that’s my job,” Jones said of the veto, insisting there were no hard feelings and no controversy.

“I don’t know if it was Brian’s idea or the coach’s idea,” he said of the change. “That’s not my job. Brian is the quarterback. He’s going to do what he’s going to do.

“I mean, once into the sled, I’m just along for the ride. As for Thursday, I was only going to take one run anyway, so I got rest and he got to experiment a little.

“Nothing has changed. We’re friends, teammates. Have been and will continue to be.”

Shimer endorsed the positive spin.

“There was some misconception, miscommunication,” he insisted. “I was only looking at some variables (on Thursday).

“I wanted to see if it was my driving, the sled or Randy. Obviously it was the (broken mounting on the) sled. I mean, Randy got me this far and we’ve closed the gap on the start times.

“I’m still not happy with them, but I’m not happy with myself. I’m not in top shape (because of a hamstring strain). I can give a good effort, but I’m not 100%.”

The Shimer-Jones start times Saturday were 5.08 and 5.09, compared to 5.04 and 5.01 for Goetschi and his pusher, Guido Acklin, whose brother, Donat, pushes for Weder. Each tick adds up.

“You can’t make up on the bottom of the hill what you lose at the top,” said Shimer, the 1992-93 World Cup champion. “No sled and no driver can.”