Aussie lies in wait for action
THE fastest sport at the Winter Olympics is not for the faint hearted.
Luge looks easy enough as competitors slide down the icy tube at speeds up to 140km/h, but the margin for error is tiny and the consequences deadly.
At the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, Nodar Kumaritashvili, a Georgian luger, died in training.
Australia’s lone representative in the sport is Townsville’s Alex Ferlazzo, who fell into the sport by accident after his mother struck up a conversation at a Pilates class with another woman who was on the lookout for young athletes to convert to luge.
Sent overseas to learn the sport because there’s not a single track in Australia, Ferlazzo was a quick learner, winning the junior World Cup in 2014.
But the senior circuit has proved more difficult. Although Beijing marks his third Olympic appearance, he’s been unable to keep up with the same competitors he beat at juniors because he hasn’t got the funding behind him.
And in a sport where the margin between the best competitors is measured by thousandths of a second, that’s an impossible gap to bridge.
“Sled technology is probably the most important part of the sport,” Ferlazzo said. “It’s like Formula One, if you’re not in the right car, you can’t win.
“The sled I have right now is the fastest it’s been in my career so far but in saying that I’m still half a second back on most tracks compared to the Germans and Austrians. So it’s difficult because it’s a struggle, but it is part of the sport and that’s why we love it.”
The urge to go faster brings obvious risks and Ferlazzo has witnessed and been involved in some spills, including one at the Chinese National Sliding Centre in Yanqing where the medals will be decided this weekend.
“I had one crash in Beijing. It was a very soft crash, just a tip down at the bottom of the track where the track is fastest,” he said. “But it seems fairly safe. I would say the track itself is a safer one.”