Luke and his Dad hanging out in the Whistler Olympic Village

Thrilled with the opportunity to reconnect with the US Luge Team and the Olympics, it had been my intent to Twitter and blog from the Whistler Olympic Sliding Center trackside, complete with action photos and vignettes of our talented US Olympic squad. Sharing the Vancouver-Whistler experience with my son and seeing the competitions through his eyes, however, I quickly discarded the real-time reporting approach in favor of just taking it all in. Besides, there were boatloads of professional journalists  — with much greater eloquence and photographic hardware than I could muster — to do the real reporting. As my friend Rick Husband, the late, great Space Shuttle Columbia Commander used to say: “You can’t swing a dead cat around here without hitting a (fill in the blank) reporter!” It was a memorable life experience, though, so here are my recollections and reflections…

The loss of a fine young man and luge athlete from the Republic of Georgia, Nodar Kumaritashvili, during a training run the day before the games began, was difficult for the luge family, doubly so for the athletes. Nodar was a talented, up-and-coming slider by many reports, and he had earned the right to represent his country at the Olympics through respectable performances in World Cup competition. The Whistler track, especially from the Men’s start, is wickedly fast — probably the fastest such track on earth — and a subtle error at high speeds of almost 100 mph might magnify into a grisly ricochet ride towards the bottom of the track. Nodar’s final moments being vaulted up and over the lip of the track, directly into a steel beam structure, were horrifying to watch over and over again on TV, but his was just one of several crashes during the build-up to the Games. Even the sport’s elite considered the track technically challenging, and occasionally resulted in spectacular impacts. I’m sure the IOC (International Olympic Committee) and the FIL (Federation Internationale de Luge) will conduct a detailed investigation and reconsider the trend of building ever faster tracks with such thin margins for error. Events such as luge, skeleton, bobsled and downhill skiing will always entail substantial risk that athletes can chose to accept or not, but it sounds like warning signs on this particular track may have gone unheeded…

For the athletes, overcoming the accident, dealing with the resulting anxiety (the “pucker factor”) and continuing the race could not have been easy.  As a result of the fatality, a plywood wall was installed to prevent a slider from cresting the lip of the track and impacting the steel support structure behind it. Each of the luge events were also dropped in start altitude to reduce the overall speed: the Men’s Singles event was run from the traditional Women’s Singles start, and the Women’s Singles and Doubles luge were run from the Junior start. These changes played against many of the athletes, including our US team, as they’d become accustomed to the speed, g-forces and cadence of the track as originally designed. The powerful German team dominated, perhaps because they have more tracks in their country than any other competing nation, and they can quickly adapt to different track conditions as they often do in their training. Regardless, our US team was truly impressive under great pressure, and hopefully they’ll stick around for Sochi 2014 when they’ll be a real force to be reckoned with.

Luke and Scott at the Whistler Olympic Sliding Center with 2x US Olympian and Silver Medalist Gordy Sheer!

One of the real treats of the trip was getting to spend some time with several of our current and former luge Olympians. Hearing their personal stories of drive and determination for an Olympic moment was truly inspirational to my son and me. A conversation while leaving the track (after the Women’s Singles competition) with my friend Gordy Sheer stands out. Gordy typifies the Olympic spirit and character of our team: a 2-time Olympian and one of the first Americans to ever medal in the sport of luge (Silver, on a doubles sled with Chris Thorpe in Nagano 1998), you’d never know of his “rock star” status in the sport. I told him how inspired I was to be at the Games, and how I’d gladly trade him one of his Olympic experiences for one of my spaceflight experiences — no medal required! — and he surprised me by saying he’d also wanted to fly in space as a kid. [We eventually concluded the trade would be tough to make, but that for each of us our 1 out of 2 wasn’t half bad either…] Anyway, I told Gordy how much I admired him, our talented 2010 US Olympic Luge Team (Tony Benshoof, Chris Mazder, Bengt Walden, Julia Clukey, Erin Hamlin, Megan Sweeney, Christian Niccum, Dan Joye, Brian Martin and US flag bearer Mark Grimmette) and all the other athletes who’ve accomplished so much by making it to the Olympics. I hope our 2010 team can stay with it through to 2014 and bring home the medals from Sochi!

Luke and Dad on a Whistler chairlift, in between speed runs

In addition to 5 major events at the luge track, we saw the Men’s downhill ski race from the slopes (we have a commemorative cow bell to prove it), and saw plenty of other Olympic competition on local TV when we weren’t out skiing or exploring the village. What a big thrill to hang out and play hooky from school (and work) to ski with him for a few days!

Quote of the trip, courtesy of my son, when watching the sport of curling on CTV: “I wonder how they find people for curling? Do they recruit maids?” (naturally meaning no disrespect for the housekeeping profession…!)

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Here are a couple of links that harken back to my luge experiences, if interested:

Astronaut, former luger visits Lake Placid schools http://www.lakeplacidnews.com/page/content.detail/id/500920.html?nav=5005

NYT: Astronaut’s Adventure on Earth: Luge http://www.nytimes.com/1998/11/06/sports/olympics-astronaut-s-adventure-on-earth-luge.html?pagewanted=1