Now, if a crash should happen, without any anticipation on your or my part, then an uncomfortable truth must be acknowledged by us both: crashes are pretty damn exciting. Particularly when no one gets hurt and they’re just good, rough-and-tumble, eye-filling fun. And that’s why my favorite part of the Winter Games thus far isn’t Fritz Strobl’s stunning victory in the downhill or Kelly Clark’s joyous gold medal in the halfpipe-it’s the nail-biting runs of the magnificently brave and stupendously terrible Asian lugers.
A few words of praise for these guys. They’ve come to Salt Lake City from Taiwan, Korea, India-not exactly places with hallowed traditions at the Winter Games. The rest of the year, they travel thousands of miles just to compete against live competition. And wherever they go, you can be sure the only people who speak their language are their teammates, and don’t you think they get tired of their teammates? They make no money and they always, always lose. But here comes the topper: They are, in World Cup terms, bad at luge, and luge is an awfully scary sport to be bad at.
On Monday at Utah Olympic Park, where the third and fourth runs of the men’s luge singles were held, five men who were closer to the medal podium before they left for Salt Lake held the entire press corps in awe. For all the wrong reasons. Their trouble always began in the same place: the near-180-degree turn six. Bump the ice in the straightaway leading up to it and the track would send your sled straight up the high arcing wall and, inevitably, flip you over at 80mph.
Shiva Keshavan of India came close. He rode the wall so high that his runners clipped the wood at the top of the chute, sending two bursts of flames shooting out the back of his sled. Miraculously, despite pitching straight down the wall after the contact, Keshavan didn’t flip. The press room ooh’d and aah’d like they had a sparkler in their hand. It was awesome.
Chui-Bin Lin of Taiwan, though, got a perfect 10 from the crowd. On his final run, Lin didn’t even wait for turn six to lose it; he rammed hard into the straightaway wall, buckled sideways and flipped onto his right shoulder. We could barely see him underneath his sled. While thus pinned (and nearly perpendicular to the track) Lin slid all the way through six-a couple hundred feet of ice, at least-before finally righting himself. “God, they’re like crash test dummies,” someone blurted out. Lin finished off his run, then pumped his fist as he ground his sled to a halt.
Lin’s teammate, Chia-Hsun Li, had two similarly harrowing runs, though (fortunately) neither ended in a full-blown crash. After Li ping-ponged through the finish, the closed-circuit television coverage replayed images of his coach-a craggly Caucasian-watching the run on a TV at the finish line and grimacing cartoonishly at all the ugly moments.
The rest of the field couldn’t match these guys. Although three true legends of the sport were jockeying for the gold and an American, for the first time ever, was making a legitimate threat to crack their ranks, the outcome seemed fated from the start. Heading into Monday’s final two runs, Armin Zoeggler of Italy comfortably led three-time German gold-medalist Georg Hackl. Hackl held a narrow lead over longtime rival Markus Prock of Austria. And Prock had a healthy cushion on Adam Heidt, the surprising young American. And that’s exactly how it ended. Big stars. Boring race.
The Asian racers, bless their hearts, were the chief drama of the afternoon. And none of them got hurt. I’d say “better luck next time,” but what fun would that be?
