Alex Gough
As Alex Gough heads feet-first into her fourth Winter Olympic Games as Canada’s top female luge competitor, she can’t help but look back on her debut.
“For my first Games, I was 18 and I was the fifth-ranked girl on the team, where three are selected,” began Gough, recalling the 2006 season. “I didn’t realize until afterward that it came down to the very last run, the very last race before Christmas, that I had secured my place on the Olympic team. Wideeyed kid, just cruising along, doing the best I can with not a lot of experience.”
At 30, no longer a novice and consistently among the top five on the World Cup circuit, Gough is hoping to snag an Olympic medal in February in PyeongChang, South Korea.
The belief that she could be a force in the sport bloomed quickly after that first major international experience.
“The real commitment to being a part of this long-term and making a career of being an athlete came a couple of years afterward, in 2008 or 2009,” said Gough, a graduate of the National Sport School. “I had an injury, so it was one of those times where I (needed to) fully commit myself to this and come back and be strong. That was a turning point for me, maturing as an athlete and being in this to see how far I could take it and how good I could get.”
Gough, who is halfway through her civil engineering degree, is optimistic about the path she’s followed to 2018.
“In Sochi, we came so close, both myself individually and as a team,” she said, recalling those fourth placings. "So right from the get-go, I was committed to another four years. I took some time away to go back to school; I needed a bit of another focus and have a plan for whatever comes next.
“This year, fully focused on sliding and competing, and excited to be getting to this point and to be gearing up toward the Games in February.”