Team USA's Summer Britcher heads to third Olympic Games
Beijing (FIL) Team USA’s Summer Britcher - the only American woman to win five luge World Cups - is all set for her third Olympic Games. The 27-year-old from Glen Rock, Pennsylvania, who has competed in six world championships, clearly remembers when luge changed her life forever.
How it all began - ‘super extra sledding’
“It started with a fun event on plastic sleds on snow,” explained Britcher. “USA Luge had made a serious course with banked curves and put in a professional timing system - like a super extra sledding course! “I was very competitive - I kept walking back up the mountain, to beat my brothers, checking my time, trying to go faster on this little plastic sled.”
Britcher was spotted on this course by Gordy Sheer - the three-time Olympian, USA’s first doubles Olympic medallist after winning silver with teammate Chris Thorpe at Nagano 1998, and Director of Marketing and Sponsorship of the United States Luge Association.
Sheer was convinced Britcher would enjoy - and be very good - on ice and convinced her parents to send her to the Lake Placid Olympic Sports Complex.
She was 11 and lived 8 hours’ drive away from the venue. “In luge, we’re not - as a rule - crazy people. We just start before we know better,” said Britcher.
Soon after trying the Lake Placid luge track, ranked amongst the most difficult in the world, Britcher started competing. She secured her first gold medal in the Junior World Cup 2011, followed swiftly by the 2012 Youth Olympic Games team relay.
Unique Beijing experience
The luge athletes competing at Beijing 2022 have had a different start into these Games. “Typically we get on the Olympic track latest in the fall [autumn] of the year before the Olympic Games,” explained Britcher. “We would have normally had a World Cup under our belts on the Olympic track. We would have then been going for training.”
This time the 2021-22 World Cup was staged on the Beijing 2022 track, and served as an Olympic qualifying event. “This added a certain amount of stress - for everyone - but the upside is we have all had the same exposure to this track,” explained Britcher.
Sharing her experience
The United States Olympic team is sending a record-breaking 108 female athletes to Beijing 2022, becoming the nation with the highest ever number of women competing at an Olympic Games.
Britcher, after scoring a silver medal in the Sochi World Cup sprint last December - her best ever singles result - is heading to Beijing as one of Team USA’s most experienced winter Games athletes.
Britcher has been sharing her valuable insight to the Olympic Games with her women’s singles team-mates, the 22-year-old Ashley Farquharson - heading to her first Games - and 2018 Olympian Emily Sweeney, military police sergeant and member of the United States Army’s World Class Athlete Program, now bound for her second Games. “Experience, and being willing to learn from experiences, is a big thing,” she explains. “It’s important to go back, to learn and consider how to do things differently.”
When Britcher competes in Beijing, she will be doing so with a friendship bracelet made by Farquharson - testament to just how much this all-time singles leader is USA Luge history means to her teammates.
photos: Eugen Esslage
