Motives for Winning

Switzerland's Fritz Feierabend is a prideful man who, at 45, can look back on a notable record in bobsledding: four world titles (the first in 1939) and five Olympic medals. Last week at the World Bobsled championships on northern Italy's evergreen-banked Cortina run, Feierabend's pride was doubly injured. In the two-man events, the Italians had placed one-two with new sleds of their own design (featuring knee-action front runners). It was beginning to look as if the famed Feierabend firm, which has produced Europe's best bobsleds for decades, had met its match at last. Lean-faced Fritz Feierabend had another strong motive for winning in the main, four-man

Seeing death, knowing happiness.

event: a year ago he had felt honor-bound to withdraw from the championships when his teammate, Felix Endrich, was killed at Germany's Garmisch-Partenkirchen (TIME, Feb. 9).

All week long bobsledders from seven nations--Germany, France, Switzerland, Austria, Sweden, Italy and the U.S.--crackled down Cortina's precipitous run with ever-increasing speed. "Bobbing" (i.e., swinging and swaying) in unison to get the last watch-tick of speed from the razor-sharp sled runners, the sledders had knocked an impossible 4.6 seconds off the Cortina record: from 1:24.34 for the mile-long run down to 1:19.74. When the championship heats began, it was Feierabend's red sled, with the white Swiss cross on its cowling, that held the course record.

Feierabend's sled was the next to last to start. Carefully, for luck, he touched each blade--then the Swiss were off. Using Feierabend's simple formula--"Hug the curves high and develop speed, like a dive bomber"--the Swiss sled was soon hitting 80 m.p.h. It spun through a series of labyrinth curves, down an ice-coated chute into famed Crystal Curve (where 24 sleds cracked up in 1950), then whipped across the finish line in a wild flurry of snow as the brakeman pulled to a stop. The announced time brought a roar from the crowd: 1:18.94, a new record.

With something to shoot at, the other bobbers went after Feierabend with a vengeance in the second heat. The proud Swiss had an answer for them when his turn came: he broke the record again with a clocking of 1: 18.07, which left him a full three seconds ahead of the runner-up, German Hans Rosch. "It's all over," conceded one German official. "All he has to do is appear here tomorrow, coast along at a conservative 1: 20, and we toast the name of Feierabend again." Next day, running almost as fast as he did in the first two heats, Feierabend won by a whopping total of almost six seconds, one of the biggest margins in bobsled history. Felix Feierabend was quietly happy: "We have seen death and we have known happiness like today." He was also rightfully proud: for the fifth time he had beaten the world's best bobsledders.

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