On icy luge tracks, Chinese and US Olympians navigate distractions, disruptions while training for Beijing
- As President Xi Jinping prioritises sports to help achieve the ‘Chinese dream’, Beijing hopes to mint medallists in previously untried events such as luge
- China creates an ‘instant’ team and hires foreign coaches to compete in the notoriously difficult winter sport
Ashley Farquharson rocks back and forth in her sled, grabs the start bars and hurtles down the icy track, hitting speeds of up to 128 kilometres per hour (80mph) before coming to rest.
Farquharson and fellow USA Luge team members are honing their skills and dreaming of medals at this refrigerated training centre in Lake Placid, New York, in preparation for the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing. But uncertainty over the highly contagious Covid-19 Delta variant and calls to boycott because of China’s human rights record have her and teammates working to block out the distractions.
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US athletes train for 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics amid calls for Games boycott
“There’s always going to be bad things in the world, whether we go or not,” said Farquharson, 22. “If I missed it, that would be a huge letdown. I don’t know if I can put words to it.”
Seven thousand miles away, Chinese sliders – as luge athletes call themselves – harbour similar dreams but longer odds. Inspired by President Xi Jinping’s call to prioritise winter sports in helping achieve the “Chinese dream”, Beijing hopes to mint champions in previously untried sports, including luge.
Over the past five years, it has hired foreign coaches, marshalled legions of assistants and arm-twisted adolescents into a sport many never heard of.
But luge, the fastest Olympic sport, is notoriously difficult. Sleds are steered by minute body adjustments using skills perfected over a decade or more, a challenge China may have underestimated in its quest for gold and glory.
“A lot of the people who don’t know the sport think you just ride down the hill,” said American Tony Benshoof, one of China’s foreign coaches, who competed for 17 years before winning a medal. “You’re fighting over not tenths but hundredths of a second.”