Friday, February 8, 2002
The young and restless
By CAMERON MAXWELL -- Calgary Sun
It'll be a very young Canadian luge team in Salt Lake City hoping to break the iron grip of the Germans.
With the oldest luger, Calgary's Tyler Seitz, only 25 and the rest of the team 22 years old or younger, the Canucks know they'll need the runs of their lives to succeed on the 1,335-metre Park City track.
Since luge became an Olympic sport in 1964, all but one of the 30 gold medals have gone to German-speaking athletes.
Seitz will be joined in the men's singles competition by Ottawa's Kyle Connelly, 21, and Calgary's Chris Moffat, 22, who also competes in doubles.
And it's in doubles where Canada has the best chance to medal.
The team of Moffat and Airdrie's Eric Pothier, 22, has had the most consistent season of all the Canadians, which included a fourth-place finish in Calgary on the World Cup circuit.
And Moffat says the duo is feeling good going into the Games.
"We're doing some work on the sled, doing some body work," said Moffat.
"We aren't feeling any pressure heading in, we're just trying to keep it real."
Moffat said he and Pothier are having great starts and just need to work on their positioning and will just let the sled run at Park City, one of their favourite tracks.
"We like Park City, which is interesting because it's a gliding track. Last year, we did better on technical tracks but this season we've done well on the gliding tracks."
The duo of Calgary's Grant Albrecht, and Moffat's brother, Mike, 19, will also compete in doubles and have a seventh-place finish, in Calgary, under their belts.
Germany's Steffen Skel and Steffen Woller, countrymen Patric Leitner and Alexander Resch, Austrian cousins Markus Schiegl and Tobias Schiegl are the top three doubles teams in the world and will likely find themselves in a battle for gold.
If Moffat and Pothier can put two great runs together, a bronze is a possibility.
Seitz, who is the only Canadian with Olympic experience (18th place in Nagano), said heading into the Games he needs to work on the mental aspect of his sliding.
"I know exactly what I have to do and it's a matter of getting my head back into the game and getting some confidence heading in," said Seitz, whose best finish on the World Cup circuit this season was a fifth place in Lake Placid, N.Y.
The men's medal winners will be decided after four runs, giving each slider two more runs than in World Cup competition.
Seitz is Canada's best hope for a medal in singles but he'll be in very tough against Germany's Georg Hackl, 36, the three-time defending Olympic gold medallist. Hackl's countryman Karsten Albert, Italy's Armin Zoeggeler and Austria's Markus Prock will all challenge Hackl for gold.
Moffat, whose best finish in World Cup competition is 10th, and Connelly, whose best is 20th, would do well to finish top 10.
One woman, Reagan Lauscher, will compete in women's singles.
Like the men's event, the women's will be contested from the best aggregate time over four runs.
Lauscher, a 21-year-old journalism student at Mount Royal College is, like Seitz, trying to find her mental edge.
She had a disappointing season on the World Cup circuit, with her best effort being a ninth in Lake Placid.
"I think it's a mental thing. The focus has to be in place and I know I have the capability to do better -- it's just a focus thing,"said Lauscher, a Saskatoon native, who admits the pressure has gotten to her.
"It really took me by surprise, how much pressure I put on myself and I wasn't expecting it."
2002 Games Luge Coverage
