Pre-season preparation Team Canada during Corona crisis: "We are athletically behind!"

Calgary (FIL) Canada has mastered the corona crisis comparatively well so far, with a good 100,000 people suffering from Covid-19 at a population of around 38 million people. Nevertheless, the luge athletes could only train individually at home for four months during the lockdown. Head coach Wolfgang Staudinger reports: "So far, the training conditions have been anything but ideal. We are athletically lagging behind in the preparation for the season!"

On their own initiative, some athletes improvised a provisional training in their garage, others in the living room or garden. It is only since July 6th that the Canadian national team can finally train again together, only with a maximum of six athletes and two coaches in the training center in Calgary. Wolfgang Staudinger explains: "Every person who enters the training centre or the offices is measured daily for fever and a detailed health questionnaire must be filled in. We have already had a case where an athlete was not allowed to train because his father currently was suffered from a cough.

The rules in Canada are very strict. The borders with the United States of America are closed for travel. The association's sports insurance does currently not provide coverage for travel to any country by the Canadian national team. "Our coach Duncan Kennedy is unable to travel from the United States to Canada. We currently have to work without the technician and coach who was hired in spring. On the other hand, even the head coach of the USA, Robert Fegg, who lives in Calgary, cannot travel to Lake Placid to join his team," Wolfgang Staudinger continues. 

How the conditions will be at the start of the season in November is not yet foreseeable. Staudinger speaks of four different scenarios that the Canadian team is currently planning. To what extent the Covid-19 crisis will affect the staging of the 50th FIL Luge World Championships in Whistler, Canada, in February 2021 or the homologation and the first runs on the new Olympic track in China, nobody knows yet. "In any case, the crisis is a very serious one. Should a second wave of infection occur in Europe in autumn, it will be very difficult for our team to start at the season-opener," said long-time successful coach Wolfgang Staudinger.