CESANA PARIOL, Italy — No blame, no regrets. Just 9-100ths of a second, less than a blink of an eye, separated Pierre Lueders and his four-man bobsled team from the Olympic Games podium Saturday night.

Lueders drove with blistering speed. The problem was, he had the fifth fastest push time in the final of the four runs.

A younger Lueders would have been seething in the finish line. He would have used his tongue like a whip on his crew.

But when the Edmonton driver stepped out of his sled and saw Morgan Alexander reduced to tears - and the devastation written across the face of the rest of the crew - he knew they had done all they could.

"I'm not going to blame anything," he said. "Those poor guys behind me, there is nothing left. The tanks for those guys are beyond empty.

"From start to finish, I'm very proud of my teammates. Right now they are hurting. I know they gave their hearts and souls."

Lueders, 35, also said he plans to race, and retire, at the 2010 Vancouver Olympics.

"I started my career in Canada in 1989," he said. "I did my first bobsled rides in Canada. I learned to drive there.

"I will retire in 2010. The last run I have will be on that ice in my own country."

Andre Lange of Germany won the gold medal in a four-run combined time of three minutes 40.42 seconds. Russia's Alexandre Zoubkov took the silver in 3:40.55 while Switzerland's Martin Annen was third in 3:40.83.

Lueders and his crew of Ken Kotyk of Rama, Sask., Alexander of Regina and Lascelles Brown of Calgary were clocked in 3:40.92.

Lueders went into the final run knowing he needed some help for a medal. He had closed the gap between himself and the Swiss by turning in a best time of 54.95 in the third heat.

But they couldn't close ground with their fourth run, clocking a 55.20. Meanwhile, their rivals didn't make a mistake.

"The Swiss opened the door for us on the first heat today," said Lueders, who along with Brown won the silver in the two-man bobsled in Turin. "We just could not get through enough.

"As far as I'm concerned there is nothing else we could do differently or better. We did all we could today. It just happened there were three teams better."

Lange set a track record of 54.80 seconds on this third run.

Canada 2 pilot Serge Despres of Cocagne, N.B., and his crew of Nathan Cunningham of Calgary, Steve Larsen of Langley, B.C., and David Bissett of Edmonton finished 20th.

The precision and speed of four-man bobsled makes closing ground difficult. Making up a few hundredths of a second is about as difficult as running 100 metres carrying a couch on your back.

The four-man is both poetic and chaotic. The start is a recipe for disaster. Think of four burly football players trying to leap into a convertible Volkswagen while it rolls along at 50 kilometres per hour.

After that, the sled's fate rests in the pilot's hands. He has to look for the right line, find the courage to go high in the corners to gain speed.

The best make it look easy. The rest can sometimes end upside down on the track, like the Brazil sled which had two spectacular crashes.

Lange, 32, also won the two-man gold. He was the four-man gold medallist at the 2002 Olympics and also won the last three world championships.