CALGARY - Pierre Lueders may have found a way to turn down the heat.
But sometimes there's no escaping the fire.
After almost two decades at the top, the king of bobsled in Canada has lost none of the ferocious drive and uncompromising will to win that has illuminated his reign.
At the age of 39, he's preparing for the 2009-10 World Cup season and what will be his fifth Olympic Games.
His friends say this is a calmer, more thoughtful version of the self-professed "wildfire burning out of control" that has battled with sports officials, politicians and even teammates throughout a stellar and often controversial career.
But what you see is still what you get: an intense and unrelenting competitor who isn't afraid to speak his mind.
The most decorated slider in Canadian history may be older and wiser, but he'll always be more McEnroe than Gretzky; the kind of born winner who can't abide losers.
In his world, you've got to be the best to beat the best.
And only the strong survive.
"I'm a fiery competitor. I voice my opinions," says Lueders. "They may be the wrong ones, they may upset people, but they're my opinions.
"Athletes are afraid to speak the truth because they're worried about the repercussions. But I've always tried to be honest. I see things for what they are. And if i think something is a bunch of BS, then I'll let people know that."
When you've ruled the sport at the national level and been a force internationally for so long, you're bound to ruffle a few feathers along the way.
But the force of Lueders' personality isn't just unique, it's what makes him so compelling.
"There's never been an English-speaking bobsled pilot that's been as dominant. The way he's been so good for so long is unbelievable," says Lyndon Rush, who pilots the Canada 2 sled. "He's a funny guy, too. But when it comes to competing, that fire he has, he snaps sometimes. I think that's part of what makes him so good."
Jack Pyc, a former sledder who now works as an engineer in Calgary, watched Lueders' meteoric rise to the top from the best seat in the house and says his former teammate has "calmed down a lot" over the years.
"We got together as a young driver and a young pusher. I was with him from 1990 to 1999," says Pyc, 39. "He was very dedicated and he was very competitive. He didn't like to lose at all."
Pyc says when you hear stories about disputes between Lueders and some of his former teammates, you've got to put them into context. Sledders train in a testosterone-soaked, highly competitive environment that's not always conducive to building friendships.
"Everybody had little falling outs or arguments," says Pyc, adding that he and Lueders got into verbal or physical altercations "many times."
"Once a year," he says. "There was always something but we always made up and continued on.
"I can't remember how it started but we had one argument where, by the end of it, we were both on the ground rolling down the bobsled hill - on the grass by the old push track. We just started rolling down the hill and wrestling. When we finished our shirts were shredded, just shredded. We kind of looked at each other and I remember laughing."
Canada will shortly unveil unveil its bobsled teams for the 2009-10 World Cup season, a process that has taken on added significance with a Canadian Olympics - the first Lueders has experienced as an athlete - just around the corner. There's more at stake than ever before, but with Lueders at the helm, even those who make that team know they're not guaranteed a spot in the 2010 sleds.
In addition to athletes he's competed alongside in recent years - Ken Kotyk, Dave Bissett and Justin Kripps - Lueders has a couple of aces up his sleeve.
One is Neville Wright, a former sprinter many consider to be the front-runner to partner Lueders in the two-man. The other is Edmonton Eskimos running back Jesse Lumsden, who is recovering from a shoulder injury but has wowed coaches with his natural ability. Lumsden also seems to have some chemistry with Lueders, which can't hurt his chances.
"Any time you can bring in other athletes, the whole program gets better," says Tuffy Latour, head coach of the Canadian team. "It is difficult to manage psychologically because a lot of our guys have put a lot of time and effort into trying out for the team. But the expectation is for Canada to win medals. You can't (always) go with the guys that have been in the sport the longest."
Lueders seems genuinely excited to have options going into such a big year and hasn't ruled out the possibility of Lumsden - who he describes as a "world-class athlete" - making the team.
"It has certainly upset the applecart in terms of the status quo thinking they've got their ticket punched," says Lueders, as forthright and painfully honest as ever. "I think it's created ripples through the whole men's side. It will ensure it keeps the existing athletes in the program honest and working hard.
"Complacency is one of the things that drives me crazy. You, know, I've seen it time and again - athletes will come in, they'll slide with me for two to three, maybe four years, and then they start to forget (what made them successful)."
Kripps, who has been sliding since 2006 and joined Lueders' team a year later, is close to Bissett and Kotyk but understands that friendships take a back seat to performance when it comes to making the 2010 team.
"We all know that coming into the sport as a brakeman you can move up really quickly but you can also move down very quickly," says Kripps.
"I don't know if it's harder for us or for the people who have been trying to get onto the team for the last four or five years - to have somebody kind of leapfrog them like that," says Kripps of Wright and Lumsden coming into the program. "But that's the nature of the sport."
Lueders says the process of picking World Cup and Olympic teams isn't a popularity contest.
"It's been made clear but I don't know if it sinks in," says Lueders. "To me, that is the million-dollar question."
Latour says he'll pick the 2010 teams in consultation with the pilots. In addition to performance, experience and team cohesion can be factors, he says.
Each pilot has their own pool of athletes to choose from and for reasons few want to discuss publicly, one of Canada's top brakemen, Lascelles Brown, won't be in the same sled as Lueders - the man with whom he won silver at Turin in 2006. Instead, he'll be in Canada 2 alongside Rush.
"He has some sort of issue with me and he decided he wanted to slide with someone else," says Lueders of Brown. "I don't have a problem with that - everyone's entitled to their own opinion."
Brown is reluctant to talk about the precise circumstances that led to the split.
"Pierre and I have not seen eye to eye," says Brown, who is a Canadian citizen but hasn't lost his thick Jamaican accent. "From the start, he was a nice guy but after a while I started to see the person he is and I couldn't take it any more so I just stepped away.
"Pierre Lueders is Pierre Lueders and I'm not trying to change him. But if you cannot deal with the fire, stay out of the kitchen."
Brown started sliding with Lueders when Giulio Zardo left the program. Zardo had been suspended following a bust-up with the then Canadian team coach and is still bitter about his time in the bobsled program, which he describes as a "kind of void" in his life.
"I had achievements but in terms of a personal feeling of achievement, there was nothing there," says Zardo, who recently tried out for the Italian bobsled team but returned to Montreal, where he now lives, after being hampered by tendinitis.
"I remember one time we finished third in Winterberg and (Lueders) yelled at me as soon as we got out of the sled. I was so happy because we finished on the podium and he laid into me. Any feeling I had of, ‘oh, you did well,' was completely dashed."
Lueders says although he's taken part in team-building exercises, he's also tried to "separate himself," to some extent, from his teammates.
"I just find that sometimes if you're too close to someone it makes it a lot harder to make a tough decision," he says. "Those personal feelings can skew your outlook in terms of what's best, for not only for yourself, but Canada, for your other teammates, the program."
Lueders says he's the first to admit he's intense and not always easy to be around. But he's an elite athlete - he's trying to win.
"The people who have gotten to know me the best and understand me, they know that if I've had a bad result or something is bothering me, OK he's mad about something ... let's leave him alone for an hour," says Lueders, who is also famous for shoving - or punching, depending on which version of the story you believe - a cameraman who got in his face at a race.
"The problems arise, particularly with athletes on your team, they read the paper ... and that's how they perceive you,"
Brown says racing with Rush - as the underdog - suits his personality more than sliding with Lueders, who he claims was reluctant to share the secrets of his success. Zardo goes further, alleging Lueders had a "kind of monopoly on the (bobsled) program."
But two of Canada's leading pilots, including Helen Upperton on the women's side and Rush on the men's, beg to differ, They say they wouldn't be legitimate medal hopes today without Lueders' help.
"He does cast a shadow but deservedly so. I haven't done anything," says Rush, whose best finish is a fourth at the World Cup in Whistler last season. "I've benefited from what he's done in the sport. Bobsled in Canada is well known because of him and our program is strong because of him. There's competition there, but it's healthy competition."
Rush says that thanks to Own The Podium cash he's been able to upgrade his equipment and is heading into the season feeling like he has a genuine shot at winning medals. If Lueders is standing in the way, it's only because he's one of the best, and most consistent, pilots of all time.
"I feel like I'm on an even playing field with the rest of the world, including Pierre," says Rush.
"Pierre and (Brown) went their own ways and I've benefited from it. He's that world class guy you need to win races.
"I want to beat everybody, not just Pierre. But I want to beat him, too."
Lueders says when he was learning the ropes, he went outside the Canadian program to seek advice from the best in the business - the leading German sledders. He says he vowed from a young age that he would never try to mislead or deceive athletes who came to him for help.
"If they need advice and want to talk about something, I'm there for them," says Lueders. "It seems that most of the younger athletes now, they want to do things their own way and that's fine. I see there's a lot of mistakes being made by many athletes . . . that will cost time, cost results and will not be beneficial for their performance."
Lueders says it's natural for there to be some jealousy among athletes simply because of the success he's had over such a long time.
But he says the suggestion he gets preferential treatment is "far from the truth."
As for being a demanding teammate, he pleads guilty as charged.
"If there are conflicts that sometimes arise, it's because people can't differentiate between friendship and business," says Lueders. "For me, I've always been business first. If I'm too demanding or I'm too (critical) in terms of people's performance, not being happy with them, a lot of athletes take that as a personal attack, that's what I don't understand.
"People that think you're too demanding, there's too much pressure, there's too much expectation, they will fall out of the picture very quickly. It's really natural selection - you could compare it to the laws of the jungle where the stronger lions will survive and the weaker ones will fall by the wayside."
For almost decades, Lueders has ruled the sport he loves at a national level and been one of the very best on the world stage.
He's the king of bobsled in Canada.
"But," he says. "I'm still waiting for the crown."
Calgary Herald
