The Witches' Pot

Ever since it was built for the 1932 Olympics, the bobsled run at Lake Placid, N.Y., has been considered the ultimate twist by the world's top bobsledders. Plummeting down through 16 curves, it was tricky, low-banked, and so wide that a slight miscalculation sent a sled careening wildly off course; scores of bobbers have been injured, and two have been killed. For the 1964 Olympics, an Austrian engineer named Paul Aste, 46, a onetime bobber himself, designed a narrower, 13-curve run in the Alpine resort of Igls, just above the Tyrolean capital of Innsbruck. Aste thought it might be a trifle slower than the slick Lake Placid chute, but far safer. He miscalculated on both counts.

Inaugurated at the world bobsledding championships that ended last week, Igls proved about 3 sec. faster for the metric mile than the Lake Placid groove. It also turned out to be a bobber's nightmare. On the second day of the two-man trials, a Swedish team piloted by Gunnar Aehs was hitting 50 m.p.h. when it zoomed into the No. 9 bend, nicknamed the Hexenkessel, or Witches' Pot. The sled slid up the 40-ft. bank, bounced down and ricocheted sickeningly from wall to wall. Aehs's upper front teeth were sheared off on the ice; both his legs were fractured twice. His brakeman was thrown free, broke only one leg. Next day the U.S. sled steered by Joe McKillip, 30, slammed into a soft snow wall as it neared the finish line; McKillip was hospitalized with a dislocated shoulder and lacerated cheek. The day after, a Canadian driver's throat was gashed almost from ear to ear when he cracked up on the straightaway in the stretch.

The trial runs were suspended for a day, while the icy run was narrowed for safety's sake. But the rebuilding job did not curb the mounting casualties. A French sled came to grief in the Hexenkessel and skidded down out of control; the brakeman was carted off with a severe brain concussion.

All told, 20 men were injured as the teams from eleven nations tried their skill --and luck--on the Igls run. Only the Italians seemed immune to the hex of the Hexenkessel. Led by Eugenio Monti, 35, six times world champion in two-man bobs, and Sergio Zardini, 31, a wiry hotel manager from Cortina, Italy's daredevils placed first and second in both the two-man and four-man events. Monti's best time for the two-man bob: 1 min. 6.4 sec., for 51 m.p.h. average.

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