Olympic officials can’t bear naked lugers’ photo

Nude Olympic luge babes promoting alcohol shooters seemed like a good idea at the time.

But now two Florida businessmen and a sports agent are in hot water with U.S. Olympic officials for the unauthorized use of a snapshot of seven teammates – tastefully shielded by their red sleds – and the sacred “O” word to hype a bar drinking game called ShotLuge.

“We have forwarded this to our legal department,” said U.S. Olympic Committee spokesman Darryl Seibel. “This Web site and the activity it promotes would appear to be inconsistent with the Olympic movement.”

Unless, of course, the movement includes a sport based on “a hot dynamic female dressed provocatively (who) needs to dance, whistle and wave the crowd in,” according to the promotional literature for ShotLuge.com.

No wonder they call luge “the fastest sport on ice.”

“Wow, look at this,” said Gordy Sheer, a 1998 Olympic silver medalist and marketing director for USA Luge, as he called up the Web site for the first time Tuesday night (as of Thursday night, the picture was no longer on the site). “I knew they were interested in doing something with our athletes, but not this.”

“They” are Kirk Collins and Mark Frank, the inventors of a plastic frame that holds a desk-top sized block of ice.

But it’s hardly a rival to Jell-O shooters until you tilt the ice, carve gutters in it and instruct bartenders to pour booze from the top until it fills the mouth of a paying fan at the bottom.

Then ShotLuge becomes “a cash cow” and “money in the bank,” according to the Web site’s testimonials from grateful bar owners.

Imagine what happens to profits if you replaced that ugly hairy bartender with “an amazing and fun athlete.” Why it becomes, according to the Web site, “an unforgettable experience.”

The photo of 2002 Olympians Courtney Zablocki and Ashley Hayden and teammates Brenna Margol, Megan Sweeney, Erin Hamlin, Samantha Retrosi and Julia Clukey was taken last fall, an impulsive thing “to share among themselves,” Sheer said. “They felt it was never going to see the light of day.”

But in the hands of another teammate – a sports agent in his other life – the picture and the overheated text by Collins and Frank had all the glow of a party at Hugh Hefner’s mansion.

“It was, perhaps, bad judgment,” said Patrick Quinn, the agent. “It was all done with good intentions to try and get the athletes some exposure.”

But this kind of shoulders-to-toes exposure is not exactly what luge officials had in mind.

“We were talking about a trade show,” said Sheer, who also was upset that three of the seven athletes pictured in the alcohol promotion are younger than 21.