The Prince rules

A royal love affair between athlete and bobsled

Posted: Mon February 9, 1998 at 1:14 PM ET

Prince Albert and brakeman Gilbert Bessi ride to a 30th place finish at the Lillehammer Games Pascal Rondreau/Allsport

NAGANO, Japan (KRT) -- The 30th-best bobsled driver in the world is 39 now, feeling his age, groping for time to train himself. He is not fast enough, he fears. He has given up the two-man bobsled this time to ride the four-man. "It is best at my age to have more people push you," he said.

He stays in the Olympic athletes' village, sleeping on the same granite mattresses everyone else does, stuffing the same shallow closets. He rides a long way to the bobsled run, and this time he's driving a casino croupier, a hotel food manager and a rookie. Worse than all this, everyone still wants to talk to him.

It is the fourth Olympic Winter Games for Prince Albert of Monaco, son of Grace Kelly, member of the International Olympic Committee, and a man so reticent and relaxed you feel you can really call him Al (no one does).

He has come out of bobsled retirement to come to Nagano, and he did not promise he would not come out of the retirement that he'll re-enter in two weeks.

He does not travel here with supplicants, not even his usual security force. "The security they have here at the Olympics is quite adequate," he said. He is looking forward to re-acquainting himself with skiing grandmaster Alberto Tomba ("He's very Italian, quite a character"), retired Norwegian speed skating champ Johann Olaf Koss, and Swedish skier Pernilla Wiberg, who is one of Monaco's 6,200 residents.

It's a strange world indeed when Olympic basketball shooting guard Reggie Miller gripes about his pillow mints in Atlanta, and the Prince is over here sharing bathrooms with snowboarders.

"I was talking at breakfast with some Russian competitors in the biathlon, and some skiers," the Prince said. "I live in the village like everyone else. There are no exceptions made for me. If you have a lot of gear, there isn't much room in the closets, but you manage. Actually, this village is excellent. A lot of high-quality facilities."

Mostly he wants to finish '20th to 25th' in the two-man competition. He was 28th in Calgary, '88, 43rd in Albertville, '92 and 30th in Lillehammer, '94. In the four-man sled he was 27th in Albertville and 26th in Lillehammer.

The team would be better, he said, if he didn't have to use Monaco natives. There are Frenchmen who ride with the Prince in other international competitions, even a Welsh rugby player. But the Prince has to recruit the local sports clubs to find bobsledders. It is not an easy call to refuse.

The Prince played all kinds of sports until he got on a bobsled run in St. Moritz, Switzerland, in 1984. "Pretty neat," he recalled. "Like a roller-coaster." He went to driving school the next year, and began assembling the '88 team soon afterward.

"As Goethe once said, daring ideas are like putting chess pieces into position," he said. "They may be defeated, but they may turn out to make a winning move."

Didn't Mary Lou Retton also say that?

There is a push track in Monaco now, and actual national championships, so no one can say The Prince pulled rank to make the team. "Of course," he said, "we only had two sleds in the competition one year. But it's picking up."

He is sensitive to local complaints that the bobsled team will disappear when The Prince ages out. "They say it's just a toy for me, that I'm out there showing off," he said. "But I'm trying to help the state of sports in general. I'm looking at the next generation of athletes. I hope that satisfies the critics."

One has trouble imagining The Prince as a lightning rod for criticism. However, His Serene Highness (his real name is Prince Albert Alexandre Louis Pierre, Marquis le Baux) is organizing Monaco's 700-year anniversary, and presiding over the Cabinet of his father, Prince Rainier. No word on whether he's going to help us out in Iraq.

He says he has to work out at midnight, because there's no time during the day. He also transmits, accurately or not, the idea that he could live quite happily without another state dinner.

"Sometimes I'm daydreaming about the competition, visualizing it," he said. "There have been times when I will do that during a concert, and everyone thinks I'm asleep. Not that I haven't fallen asleep during concerts."

Isn't it great when you meet a prince that turns to be sort of like you and me? Isn't it something when all Prince Albert really wants to do is drive a bobsled as fast as he can, with the guys? Wasn't it nice when he said his teammates regularly tell him when he botches a start?

"They are not hesitant in the least," he said. "I am very receptive to CONSTRUCTIVE criticism. Other kinds? Well, we don't have a dungeon in the palace anymore. Although we do have some dark and narrow passageways."

Gretzky, Lindros, Kwan and Maier can win all the gold they want. At this Olympics, The Prince rules.

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