LUGE: Beth Slade is Australia’s newest athlete to the extreme sliding sport of Luge and as she improves on the frozen tracks of Europe her dream of qualifying for the Winter Youth Olympic Games (YOG) is becoming more and more like a possibility.
The 15-year-old from Caves Beach near Newcastle on the New South Wales coast, needs to earn World Cup points from three of the four qualification events. Following the event in Germany on the weekend she has now successfully completed two events and if she can do the same this weekend in Austria she could earn a spot.
The second Winter Youth Olympic Games will be held in Lillehammer, Norway in February. It was on the Lillehammer track that Slade had a small crash and failed to register a result at the start of the season.
Slade then re-grouped after the crash in her very first competition to register results in Latvia and Germany in consecutive weekends.
It is the Innsbruck track in Austria this coming weekend that she must tame and complete two clear runs to make it possible for the amazing experience of competing at the YOG.
Slade has excelled in netball, swimming and surf lifesaving. Now she is attempting a sport that most Australians can only comprehend if they imagine freezing their local water slide and putting metal runners on the bottom of a fast food tray.
As well as having no fear, Luge athletes need the strength to push off and control the sled at upwards of 130km/hr and react instantly to the challenges of each track they compete on.
A meeting with two-time Olympian Hannah Campbell-Pegg got her interest in the sport and then Campbell-Pegg took her to Lake Placid, USA in March so she could train on a track and get the feel for the sport to see if she liked it.
Nine months and three competitions later she is one event away from joining the Australia Team in Lillehammer.
Alex Ferlazzo from Townsville represented Australia at the inaugural Youth Olympic Games in Innsbruck in 2012 and went on to be selected from the Olympic Winter Games in Sochi in 2014.
It is anticipated that Australia will qualify approximately 15 athletes for the event in Norway from 12-21 February in nine disciplines.
Lillehammer 2016 will include many of the venues from the Winter Games in 1994 with 1,100 young athletes from 70 nations competing in 70 events. It will be a competition and education experience they will never forget.
Hopefully after a successful weekend in Innsbruck, Slade will be able to go home to Australia to thaw out for Christmas and prepare for a return to Europe in February for the Winter Youth Olympic Games.
Andrew Reid
olympics.com.au
