At the top of the Mt. Van Hoevenberg bob-sled run, near Lake Placid, N. Y., Gilbert Colgate and Richard Lawrence last week prepared to try for the two-man championship of North America. Dressed in bright blue uniforms, wearing goggles and blue leather helmets, neither bothered to examine the steering apparatus of the sled. They already knew that the most important bolt holding the front runner under control was missing, but they had decided to risk going down without it.
The Mt. Van Hoevenberg run is the only place in the U. S. to practice a sport imported from Switzerland for the last Winter Olympic Games. It is a deep trench winding like an ice-lined gutter down the mountainside. Sleds ordinarily reach a maximum speed of about 60 m. p. h., gathering speed by riding high on the banks of its three dangerous turns— Whiteface, Shady Corner, Zig-Zag. The Colgate sled went a little faster than that. When it reached the bottom—still intact despite the missing bolt—its time for four heats was 7:57.31, a new U. S. record. Steersman Colgate, son of the late Soapman Gilbert Colgate, learned bob-sled driving in Europe. Closest to the Colgate team was the Adirondack Bobsled Club team, piloted by Donna Fox. On its last run the Fox sled, with "knee action'' runners made of an aluminum alloy, jumped the track just below Whiteface, landed safely on the roadway beside it.
Pioneer bobbers in the U. S. are the four bear-trapping, motorboat-driving, flying, hotel-owning Stevens Brothers of Lake Placid. Beaten this year for the two-man title, they had the satisfaction of keeping the four-man title in the family. Hubert, who won the two-man championship last year, was too ill to defend it this year. Last week two Stevens teams were entered in the four-man race. After a day's postponement because it was so cold that drivers' noses froze while they were making the run, Raymond Stevens won the title for the Stevens family for another year.