Bermuda's Patrick Singleton shrugged off his tragic crash on Sunday night to turn in his best two times on the luge track at the Winter Olympics in Utah yesterday.

Singleton, who was “devastated” by the wipe-out during Sunday evening's second run, said he tried to put all of the negative thoughts behind him at the Olympic Park yesterday and as a result turned in two good slides.

In the end the 27-year-old Bermudian pulled himself up from 44th place to finish these Games 37th out of a field of 50.

“These were not a good Olympics for me,” said Singleton after the fourth and final race was completed.

On Sunday night the question was how he would respond mentally after his crash. Early indications were not good as he sat with his head in his hands for over 20 minutes not moving inside the athletes' rest area.

But yesterday morning he was more upbeat while still carrying his disappointment as he knew that there was absolutely no recovery in the Olympics from such a mishap.

“When something like that happens you know it is over. You can't make up ground, not in this sport,” said Singleton.

Physically he was hurting after slamming into the ice at over 130 kph. “You never really feel it until later. It takes at least an hour to feel it. And this morning I definitely felt it, especially in my neck,” he said.

But late on Sunday night his coach and sled technician, Jonathan Edwards, and other Olympic lugers went to his room in the Olympic Village to console him and also to boost his spirits to at least help ease the mental pain.

“My coach said, ‘you know what time you could have got. These things can happen',” said Singleton, adding, “They had been looking at my split times in training and saw how they were improving. They said ‘you have to fight for yourself now'.”

But when he came out for yesterday's final two runs, Singleton didn't feel quite normal. He said: “I was really nervous. I am never very good at recovering quickly from a crash - especially a crash at speed like that. I was trying to think ‘what did I do wrong'. You try and break it all down and figure it out. But in the end it was simply my mistake. Unfortunately it was a good run until the crash (at the final corner).”

When he went down his third run yesterday morning Singleton said he treated it a bit like a training run. “It was a good run but could have been better. And I almost made the same mistake as I did before (in the crash). I have found that generally when you make a mistake like that you can make the same one again. I tried not to think about it too much. Having said that, the run was good coming off Sunday night.”

But the Bermudian slider still leaves the Olympics unhappy. “I am not satisfied with my performance as a whole. But I am fairly happy with today's runs considering what happened before.”

Singleton said the lugers who came to see him in the village on Sunday night all told him: “Don't be too harsh on yourself.” “I do tend to be harsh on myself in situations like that,” he added.

Yesterday morning his coach tried a different tactic.

Singleton explained: “He was laughing and joking before the start. I suppose that is all you can do. You know you are out of the competition so you just go and try your best and have some fun. Enjoy yourself. These are the Olympics. It was the best way to relieve the pressure.”

Singleton's times were 47.015 for race one, 48.690 for race two, 45.769 for race three and 46.298 for race four.

Singleton also looked a little different for his third and fourth races yesterday. “I slipped on a new suit today. My other one got messed up (in the crash) so I borrowed one from the Latvians,” he said.

Georg Hackl's dream of becoming the first Winter Olympian to win four successive individual golds in the same event was dashed as Italy's Armin Zoeggeler snatched the men's luge title yesterday.

Zoeggeler timed two minutes 57.941 overall with the German, regarded as the top luger of all time, 0.329 seconds behind after the four runs.

The bronze went to Austrian Markus Prock.

The 35-year-old Hackl had won silver followed by three golds in his previous four Olympics since his debut in Calgary, Canada, 14 years ago. The Bavarian, nicknamed ‘The Speeding Sausage' because of his stocky frame squeezed into a skin-tight racing suit, knows what narrow margins are all about. He beat Prock to the 1992 Albertville title by just over three tenths of a second and repeated the result over the Austrian in Lillehammer two years later by 0.013 of a second.

Had he won yesterday, Hackl might have changed his nickname to ‘The Carl Lewis of the luge'. The American sprinter-long jumper Lewis is among a handful of Olympians to have won four golds in the same event in successive summer Games.

Lewis - with a somewhat different physique to Hackl - achieved it in the long jump before retiring after the 1996 Atlanta Games.