I'm a Luger, Baby
I went to Lake Placid to sled like an Olympian. It was totally terrifying—and unbelievably fun.
Courtesy of Seth Stevenson
Of the 15 sports in the Winter
Games, surely the most relatable is the luge. There are many among us
who have never snowboarded. Very few have tried curling. And I imagine
that only a handful of us—people whom I hope never to encounter—go
cross-country skiing with high-powered rifles strapped to our backs. Yet
I would wager that any American child who has seen snow has also at
some point attempted to sled down a hill.
Seth Stevenson
Luge is essentially sledding at the Olympic level. Of course, the
luge course isn’t actually a hill—it’s a chute that resembles a giant Krazy Straw.
And the luge sled isn’t some dog-nibbled plastic saucer—it’s a finely
tuned chariot with precision-honed steel runners. Luge is, in fact, the
Platonic ideal of the sledding experience. I know, because last March,
after pleading with the U.S. Olympic team, I got to try it myself.
I went to the Olympic training center in Lake Placid, N.Y., site of
the 1980 Winter Games, and was met at U.S. luge team headquarters by
Gordy Sheer. Sheer is currently marketing director for the United States
Luge Association, but in his youth he won a silver medal in men’s
doubles luge at the 1988 Winter Games in Nagano, Japan. (Doubles luge is
the Platonic ideal of sharing a small plastic saucer sled with your
younger brother.) He promised to give me enough preliminary instruction
to help me avoid embarrassing or maiming myself when I went out on the
track.
We began at the team’s refrigerated indoor space. This warehouse-like
room is the only such facility in the United States and one of about
six in the world, according to Sheer. It mimics the first 100 feet or so
of a luge course, with actual ice, allowing the luge athletes (cool
kids call them “sliders”) to hone their start techniques. Sheer led me
up some metal stairs to the elevated starting gate and sat me on a sled.
Here, we practiced the propulsive launch that makes for a successful
run. You grab a pair of bars on the sides of the gate with your hands
and glide the sled’s runners back on the ice, coiling yourself so your
chest presses down toward your knees. Then you rocket yourself forward
with a smooth and powerful release.
At least, that’s the plan. My first few efforts left me in a gangly
tangle of sled and human, careening dangerously toward the edges of the
track. I’d dismount, lug 30-odd pounds of sled back up the staircase,
and try again. Soon enough I’d figured out to sacrifice oomph for
control as I settled for a less explosive but more accurate start. I
eventually even learned to fairly smoothly transition from the seated
start position into the supine riding position I’d be assuming for the
length of the run.
As we toured the team facility, preparing to leave for the real
course, we passed a complex-looking device with wires coming out of it. I
asked Sheer what it was. He politely but firmly said, “Please don’t
photograph that,” and then explained it was a “balance point” machine
that analyzes the weight distribution of the sled. Top-secret tech.
It turns out luge is a sport rife with spying. The composition of the
steel in the sleds’ runners is a proprietary secret, a recipe perfected
through spectral analysis and kept from prying eyes. The geometry of
the sleds themselves is jealously guarded. I met Duncan Kennedy, the
luge team’s technical development manager (or, as he refers to himself,
“chief sled tinkerer”), and got an earful of stories about luge
espionage. “I’ve been up in trees with binoculars looking at other
teams’ sleds,” he chuckles. “One time a German”—the Germans are
acknowledged masters of luge—“left his sled unattended on a shuttle up
to the top of the mountain. There were hands all over it.”
But now it was time to hit the actual course. We hopped in Sheer’s
car and took a short drive to the nearby Mt. Van Hoevenberg, where the
track is carved into the slope, surrounded by forest. Sheer brought me
to a starting gate that feeds into the course about halfway down, so I
wouldn’t be able to gather enough speed in my run to hurt myself too
badly.
Photo by Ezra Shaw/Allsport/Getty Images
At the most recent Winter Games in Vancouver, Canada, a Georgian slider died on the course when he flipped out of the track during training and hit a structural pole at nearly 90 miles per hour. (I covered the International Olympic Committee press conference
after the death.) Experienced sliders from around the world soon began
to express their terror at the Vancouver course design, which sometimes
generated speeds of around 95 miles per hour. The IOC elected to move
the men’s start down to the women’s start gate and have women start from
the juniors’ to hold speeds down. The track in Sochi, Russia, for the
2014 competition has been designed with an unprecedented three uphill
sections to keep speeds under control.
All of which is to say: This is a scary sport. As I waited for the
track announcer to call my start time over the PA—it’s very important to
stagger the starts so sliders don’t collide with each other on the
track and cleanly slice through each other’s tendons with sharp steel
runners at high speed—Sheer had me keep warm in a little waiting hut
next to the gate. I was zipped into my skintight bodysuit, which was
apparently a backup or hand-me-down, as it had “VERIZON” scrawled in
marker across the chest in lieu of actual sponsorship graphics. My feet
were squeezed into aerodynamically shaped racing booties, thin enough
that I could feel the front tips of the sled’s runners through my toes
for more nuanced steering. I wore a helmet, which—though I needed no
reminding—kept me constantly aware that I was about to go shrieking down
a mountain, creating manifold opportunities to bash my head into things
at tremendous velocity.
My countdown warning came. I brought my sled to the gate, boarded it,
and waited for the starting beeps. And then I was off, settling myself
back for the ride.
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