Lugers spend months living and training together
Lugers spend months living, training together
PYEONGCHANG, South Korea – Jayson Terdiman compares doubles luge to a marriage, and it has nothing to do with the 46 or so seconds they spend literally laying on top of each other on a sled going 70 mph.
“It’s five months a year living together, and the other seven months we’re training together,” Terdiman said.
“We don’t live together in Lake Placid, but we see each other five days a week in the weight room, the start house, the recovery areas.”
And, if all goes well Wednesday, Terdiman and his partner Matt Mortensen might see each other on the podium.
The Mortensen-Terdiman team represents the best chance the U.S. has had to win a medal in doubles luge since taking the silver and bronze that year. Since pairing in 2014, Mortensen and Terdiman have consistently improved their performance on the World Cup circuit and feel like they’re finally ready to do some damage at the Olympic level.
That confidence could only have improved on Sunday as they posted the fourth-fastest times in their first two training runs at the Alpensia Sliding Centre.
“We have a very high level of determination,” Mortensen said. “If we have an opportunity, we seize it.”
Contrary to what it might look like on television, doubles luge isn’t just putting two random guys on a sled. Even in bobsled, the relationship between driver and brakeman doesn’t require the same amount of synchronization between partners through every curve. A slight shift in body weight that doesn’t align with the other could be catastrophic, and partners are often chosen specifically to mesh their physical characteristics.
“They tend to do a small guy and a tall guy,” said Terdiman, who will be on the back of the sled at 5-8, 155 pounds while the 6-0, 187-pound Mortensen will be in the more gravity-friendly position up front. “That’s an aerodynamics thing and a sled driving thing. The tall guy having more leverage on the front end of a sled, and the shorter guy kind of hiding, like trying to engulf me so the air flow work a little bit better. Matt’s height and my height kind of mesh well together.”
But to get to this point was a fouryear process that began after the Sochi Games when their former partners decided to leave the sport competitively to pursue other interests.
They had talked before those Olympics about training together in Lake Placid, just to see how the chemistry would work. In a sport where the luger on the bottom of the sled has to react to his partner 100% of the time in order to simply avoid crashing, that isn’t easy to find.
“It’s definitely different on a doubles sled,” said Andrew Sherk, who makes up half of the other U.S. doubles entrant alongside Justin Krewson. “Being a bottom man, I can’t see anything going down the track. I have to rely on Justin’s movements to do anything. If there’s a curve coming up I have to rely on his head movements and body movements going down the track.”
When Mortensen and Terdiman made 19 runs at Lake Placid without crashing, that was good enough to formulate a four-year plan to make it to Pyeongchang.
“Doubles has a steep learning curve, especially when you’re jumping on a sled with a new teammate,” Terdiman said. “So we traveled the world trying to gain experience on each track because the lines he’d drive with his previous teammate and the lines I’d drive with my previous teammate wouldn’t really work as well for the two of us on the same sled.”
Their first year together on the World Cup circuit, they focused on simply gaining experience and familiarity and wound up seventh. The next year, they were fifth. And by 2016-17, they had improved to No. 3 in the world, earning medals at Lake Placid, Park City and Altenberg.
“There’s a bit of balance that goes on when you pair up with a new doubles teammates,” Mortensen said. “I didn’t have medal aspirations (in Sochi). This time, especially with how Jason and I have done the past couple seasons, I really hope we can make something special happen here. I definitely think we have a shot at getting on the podium. If we can get down the track cleanly, anything can happen.”
Regardless of how it turns out, however, the marriage, so to speak, continues on.
“Luge is an individual sport, but doubles gives you that team aspect,” Terdiman said. “It’s great, when you have a great run, you can kind of celebrate with somebody. We both work hard together and it’s great to be able to celebrate victory together and get through defeat together. It’s great to have someone to go through these emotions with.”