‘94 WINTER OLYMPICS / Lillehammer : Bobsledders’ Hopes Go Downhill Fast : Four-man: Will (10th) says it was too cold. Shimer (11th) says he can move up today. German team leads after two runs.

HUNDERFOSSEN, Norway —  The final two heats of four-man bobsled will help conclude the Winter Olympics today.

U.S. drivers Randy Will and Brian Shimer--10th and 11th respectively after Saturday’s first two heats--are out of contention but not out of bizarre accounts.

Improbable? It’s as if those trolls of Norwegian legend are riding as brakemen for these guys.

Consider:

--Will, reacting to the February cold of Norway as if it were a sudden development, said the ice was too cold for his Austrian-made runners, the steel blades on which the sled rides. The ice of the Olympic chute was 13 degrees below zero Saturday. He said it needed to be 10 degrees warmer.

“We had two awesome trips,” he said of the two runs. “The guys pushed their hearts out and I drove 100%, but our battle is with the temperature. If it’s warmer, nothing beats me, but this is Norway. I need the DDG runners that the Swiss and Germans use. They’re flying here.”

Harald Czudaj, driver of Germany II, held a narrow lead over two bobsled legends heading into today’s competition. Gustav Weder of Switzerland I was .12 of a second behind, and Wolfgang Hoppe of Germany I was .18 of a second behind.

The Swiss claim to mold their own runners. The Germans use what are called DDGs, made by a factory in Dresden.

“Used to be East Germany,” Will said. “Now it’s free enterprise.”

Did Will, ninth in the 1992 Olympics and retiring after this race, consider buying DDGs in preparation for the cold?

“I don’t have the $5,000,” he said. “I’ve already spent $70,000 on my equipment (he uses his own Italian-made sled) the last four years. I’m just a broke athlete having a blast here, trying to salvage some dignity and do my best for the U.S.

“It’s just a shame getting beat on a technical edge. They’re just not going to beat us any other way.”

--Shimer employed the only DDGs to which the U.S. Bobsled Federation had access. In a strange twist, they were rented from driver Bruce Rosselli, who failed to qualify for the Olympic team while using them and subsequently named Shimer and the federation in a conspiracy suit that was rejected in arbitration and in court. Now Shimer and the federation are promising to sue Rosselli for libel and defamation.

Thus, on the eve of the Olympics, Shimer went to an on-and-off the ice antagonist for runners he has never used before, but that’s not all. He also chose to drive a new sled, borrowing the Bo-Dyn sled that has been used by Jim Herberich, who was eliminated by Will and Shimer in a race-off for the two U.S. Olympic berth.

Is this a little chancy?

“Yes, but you never know how sleds are going to perform under different conditions,” Shimer said. “The way we were going in the system we were using, I’d have struggled to finish in the top 10, and I didn’t come this far to do that. I mean, I know it’s a little late for a fresh start, but I thought it was worth the risk. Besides, there are three different setups with the Bo-Dyn, and we put the steering system off my sled into this one, so it wasn’t entirely new.”

Shimer jumped from 13th to 11th with the ninth-best time in the second heat and said he was excited about that and the opportunity to move up even more when he starts early in the third heat on clean ice.

“We could be 2 1/2 seconds faster or more,” he said.

A three-time Olympian, Shimer plans to continue, enthusiastic about the Bo-Dyn project and his hope it will make as much progress in runner development as it has in only two years with the sled itself.

“If they continue to receive financial support, we should have more than one or two options by the time of the next Olympics,” Shimer said, referring to runners.

Said Will: “If I was four years younger and not married I’d be staying with the Bo-Dyn project, too.”

Part of him will be. He said that he had sold his runners to the Bo-Dyn interests. Don’t look for their future use in Norway, however. It tends to be brisk here in February.