And He Looks Like a Shoo-In to Boot

They might question his soles, but not his soul.

“Georg Hackl is a class alone,” Austrian luge star Markus Prock said of his longtime rival. “He’s just very, very fast.”

The fastest in Sunday’s first two runs of the Winter Olympic men’s singles, and the fastest in Monday’s third run, which left the German mountain man and soldier about 49 seconds and one run away from becoming only the sixth athlete to win the same title in three consecutive Olympics.

In this one, officials of the U.S. and Canadian luge federations contend, Hackl has had some unneeded assistance.

They filed separate protests after Sunday’s first run, claiming the booties--Herr Jordans?--worn by Hackl and teammate Jens Mueller, who was fourth after three rounds, violated two rules: They were not available to all competitors, as required, and they were shaped in such a way as to form an illegal angle, improving air flow or, as Hackl acknowledged, reducing his time by a valuable two- or three-hundredths of a second--often the margin of a victory.

The protests were denied after Sunday’s second run by the international rules jury, which is composed of a German, an American and a Swede. The vote was 2-1, with the Swede, Bjorn Walden, casting the deciding vote.

“Pure garbage,” said a Canadian official. He added that it would have been a shame if the Germans had been disqualified but “it would also have been their own fault.”

U.S. luge official Sandy Caligiore said the jury’s decision was unfortunate.

“We were looking for the letter of the law to be enforced,” he said. “If the situation had been reversed, the Germans would have wanted the letter of the law enforced.

“We were not seeking a disqualification. We were not looking for Hackl and Mueller to be knocked out of the race. We wanted them to use a different bootie for the next three runs. We wanted to even the playing field.

“I mean, no one begrudges Hackl. He’s an icon. God only knows, he might win this going backward.”

Hackl was pointed in the right direction again Monday. He was asked what was different about his new booties, smiled slyly, and said:

“They’re yellow. If they were black, no one would say anything, but they look new and strange.

“It’s not my problem. They are within the rules. They have a good aerodynamic shape, and that’s the advantage.”

Hackl added that the event’s technical director, Germany’s Karl-Heinz Anschuetz, had approved the booties, but Fred Zimny, the U.S. team leader, said Anschuetz acknowledged to him that the booties formed an illegal angle.

If the U.S. and Canada were playing mind games, they probably picked the wrong man.

“He was just born with a feeling of no pressure,” German Coach Thomas Schwab said of Hackl, who lives in the Bavarian Alps.

Now 31, Hackl began sledding when he was 12. German officials say he was obsessed from the start, often waking in the middle of the night to polish the runners on his sled.

Hackl now builds his own, a new one every year, and is not afraid to experiment.

“He’s always sliding on different sleds,” said U.S. sledder Larry Dolan. “One time he came to the track and had a bag over his sled with a padlock on it. Everyone is looking at the bag, even guys on his own team. I kind of laughed. It’s his little game, and it gets to some people. He just doesn’t let other people’s games get to him.”

Besides his two golds, the 5-foot-8, 179-pound Hackl won a silver in the 1988 Olympics at Calgary and has won three world championships.

“He’s always on an even keel, and that’s the difference,” said Wendel Suckow of the U.S., sixth through three runs and planning to retire after the fourth.

“You look at major races over the years, he’s always the one who puts the dagger between his teeth on the first run,” Suckow said of Hackl. “He comes away with the lead, and that’s really important, not only as a confidence builder, but it also shakes everyone else’s confidence.”

Indeed. He had to be a little gutty to break out those yellow booties on Sunday--perhaps as a beacon amid the vision-obscuring snow.

They are made by Adidas, which has long supplied the U.S. team with footwear.

“We had heard that [the Germans and Austrians] had this new super bootie about a month ago,” Caligiore said. “We called Adidas and said we wanted access to the latest and best. Adidas said they didn’t have the material and didn’t have the time to get it done [before the Olympics].

“Our inability to get the same boot that the Germans had brought the rule in play. It’s clear. No competitor can wear equipment that isn’t available to every other competitor.”

Walden, the Swedish judge, said he called Adidas during the deliberations and concluded that American officials had not given Adidas time enough to manufacture the new shoe, which is why he cast the deciding vote against the protest.

There might be some frustration involved here. The U.S. has never won a luge medal. All 81 have gone to athletes from Germany, Austria, Italy and the former Soviet Union.