TOOLING ALONG : CALLING SPADE A SLED: SHOVEL-RACING ADHERENTS HAVE DREAMS OF OLYMPICS.

Byline: Dan Lazar Special to the Daily News

The ingredients are simple: snow, a hill, a grain shovel - and just a pinch of insanity.

Place tush on the shovel's scoop; point the handle downhill.

Cook for 30 seconds at 70 mph.

That's shovel racing, a New Mexico dish that a small group of enthusiasts envisions serving up at the Olympics some day. And it's just about the craziest sport you'll ever see.

``The adrenaline rush is a lot like 300 mph in a dragster,'' said Bill Burgess of Angel Fire, N.M., a pioneer in the sport. ``It's scary as hell.''

And it's just starting to pick up speed.

An offshoot of the sport, called modified-shovel racing, made its debut Saturday during the Winter X Games at Big Bear Lake. The World Shovel Racing Championships is set to take place this weekend at New Mexico's Angel Fire ski resort - the one and only other venue for this sport.

But no matter how strange racing down a ski slope on a souped-up garden tool at freeway speeds might seem, shovel racing has a history, a dedicated following and ambitions.

``It's everything. It's huge,'' said Los Angeles native and shovel racer John Strader. ``It's been about pride, speed and fun.''

Decades ago, before snowmaking machines kept ski slopes tidy and smooth, resorts repaired trails by melting snow over bare spots with an ammonium nitrate fertilizer.

The dirty work was done by trail crewmen, who used a grain shovel to spread the fertilizer around.

The hired help soon discovered that walking from bare spot to bare spot was a snail's pace compared sitting on the shovel scoop and scooting about.

Before long they started racing each other for fun and a sport was born - production-shovel racing. It's been competed at Angel Fire for 25 years.

``I can go 70 miles per hour just on a grain shovel,'' Strader said.

Then technology caught up to the action. Shovels were modified. The first one was attached to a big kid's tricycle, Burgess said.

Appropriately dubbed modified-shovel racers, the shovels came to resemble sleds and now look more like snow dragsters without wheels. They cost upward of $8,000 and weigh up to 500 pounds. Many employ a nitrogen-powered pneumatic braking system and borrow parts from jet engines, pickup trucks, tractors - you name it. But they are fueled only by the force of gravity.

``We used a guy who builds drag racers to build our sled,'' said Gail Boles of Albuquerque, N.M., who crashed violently Saturday while competing in the modified-shovel race. ``He once built a dragster that he put skis on, then resold it (after a race) as a dragster.''

So then, where's the shovel? It's placed directly under the racer's rear, though it bears no weight.

The mix produces a high-speed sled and some spectacular crashes.

``The worst I've ever seen?'' Boles said when asked about wrecks. ``Broken neck, collarbone and a compressed vertebrae.''

Before the Winter X Games, there were only 18 modified-shovel racing sleds in the world.

During the games, crashes destroyed five of the 12 competing shovel-sleds. In a dramatic accident during Sunday's finals, racer Strader fractured a vertebrae.

But crashes aren't necessarily terminal for shovel racing, at least when it comes to publicizing the little-known sport.

``Let's face it, people like to see that,'' said ESPN X Games executive director Jack Wienert of the recent crashes. ``We just hope that everyone is OK.''

Bringing in viewers is what this sport needs if Strader is ever to realize his dream of bringing shovel racing to the world of big-time sports.

``We want to ride our production shovels down luge tracks in the Olympics,'' he said days before his injury. ``And (modified-shovel racing) is something we believe we can get into the NASCAR racing circuit.''

It's got a long way to go. Organizers of the World Shovel Racing Championships expect the event to draw its faithful 2,000 to 3,000 fans this weekend. And for these few men who cling to their unusual hobby, that's motivation enough to risk life and limb.

``They are dead serious,'' Burgess said. ``Know those guys who work all week on the race car for the Saturday drag races? This is the same thing.''

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Photo

Photo: Modified shovels are something more than a simple shovel, as shown by this photo of the vehicle piloted by Don Adkins of Holman, N.M. They are still propelled by only gravity.

Myung J. Chun/Daily News