Published May 2, 2004 12:00AM
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Winter Olympics Preview, February 1998THE UP-AND-COMERS Hold the Ice Now that America’s top lugers have proven they can match the Europeans drink for drink, they have something to prove on the track By Julian Rubinstein When American lugers Chris Thorpe and Gordy Sheer won their first World Cup doubles event, in the blighted formerly communist town of Sigulda, Latvia, in February 1995, it was a night to remember — if only they could. The legendary German duo of Stefan Krausse and Jan Behrendt, whom they had edged out by nine-hundredths of a second, dragged them down to the tiny bar at their hotel and fed them shots until Thorpe got sick and Sheer could barely stand. “It was like an initiation,” says Sheer, 26, of the hazy memory. “Up until then, they’d never really talked to us. Now we hang out together.” That the 1992 Olympic gold medalists have embraced Thorpe and Sheer speaks volumes for the American duo’s accomplishments. When Thorpe and Sheer bulleted their way to glory, winning the 1996-97 World Cup, they made history by becoming the first non-Europeans to take the overall title. From the U.S. perspective, their performance was nothing short of a miracle. In the 17 years since the U.S. Luge Association formed in the basement of a Lake Placid delicatessen called Capt. Billy’s Whiz Bang, American sliders have mostly raced as if they hadn’t digested the meal that preceded the meeting. Except for occasional successes, most significantly Wendel Suckow’s unlikely win at the 1993 world championships in Calgary and Duncan Kennedy’s solid World Cup results in ’92 and ’93, the U.S. has been notorious for choking in the big events. Needless to say, no American has ever won an Olympic medal in luge. Suckow will give it one last college try in Nagano, but hopes will be riding on Thorpe and Sheer, who have slowly but steadily risen through the international doubles ranks since they began racing together a decade ago, finishing 12th in the ’92 Olympics and fifth in ’94. They began their final ascent to the sport’s top tier in 1996, when they scrapped their four-year-old sled for a sleeker model and readjusted their body positions so that the sled and not Thorpe’s outstretched feet trip the electric start timer, saving them as much as one-tenth of a second, an eternity in luge. It’s hard-won success for two athletes whose sport garners little but smirks in their home country and whose days are spent lying back-to-belly on a sled traveling 80 miles per hour. “Some people think what we do is strange,” admits Sheer, who rides on bottom. “But really we’re just traveling the world sleigh-riding.” Still, there are dark moments, moments when the pair fantasize about abandoning luge for its hipper and more popular urban stepson, street luge. Woozy from toiling so long in obscure frozen ice chutes, Thorpe and Sheer see the bastardized road game as a career opportunity. “I’d like to see if I could get into the X Games,” says 27-year-old Thorpe. “Though I wouldn’t be going for the whole daredevil persona thing.” But first Nagano and perhaps, finally, the love of a nation. They already scored the luge equivalent of a Wheaties box when the Orlando branch of the Official All Star Cafe recently announced that it would erect a life-size display of the pair, complete with video clips. Still, they shy away from the suggestion that they could be one race away from immortality. “We didn’t get into this for fame or fortune,” says Sheer. “Until you’ve been down the ice yourself, you’ll never understand.” |