(August 2, 2023) – For our third athlete profile of 2023 (and the 41stin the “Getting to Know…” series) we chat with Germany’s Dajana Eitberger. Dajana is the 2018 Olympic sliver medalist in women’s luge, and is the sport’s reigning sprint world champion. She also won the 2015 Junior World Championship and has finished second overall in World Cup points four different times. Entering the 2023/2024 campaign, she will make the transition to a doubles athlete alongside teammate Saskia Schirmer as they begin efforts to qualify for the 2026 Olympic Winter Games.
Slider: Dajana Eitberger
Team: German Luge
Hometown: Ilmenau, Germany (currently residing in Augsburg)
Home track: Oberhof
To start, which track is your favorite and why?
There’s not just one favorite track for me. I really love the tracks that aren’t so easy, not like Innsbruck or Winterberg…I love the tracks where you have to work. So like Park City, Lake Placid, where there are points you have to handle very well. Places where my experience helps me in various situations. Oberhof, obviously, it’s my home track and I know every corner and every centimeter of the track. Lillehammer too!
Altenberg is the one I probably like the least, there’s nothing under it. It’ll be interesting for me next year when we have World Championships there.
Do you prepare differently for those tracks where you know you don’t have to drive them as hard?
I have to get my mindset handled for that kind of situation on an easier track, because I know I don’t like it and my body knows this! I feel that it’s a lot harder to handle that kind of situation and do the training runs, because I know everyone can be fast at tracks like that and I need to be perfect. Perfect from start to finish.
Completely unrelated to the track, what is your favorite town to visit on the schedule and why?
Most of the time we don’t have too much time to spend doing tourist things, but I enjoy Vancouver when we fly in and drive to Whistler. There are some really impressive things to see along the way.
We had more time to visit in Calgary to visit the town because it’s not so far from the track. I really like Lillehammer, when we have training camp there…it’s nice to see how they prepare things for Christmas. Innsbruck has their Christmas Market and it feels a little more like home. We don’t always have a lot of time at Christmas, so we have to look for times when we can have a little feeling of home.
Whistler is great when their lights are on, and the snowflakes are falling, and it’s just a little more like home!
Once the season is over, how do you spend your time before getting back into training?
The first day when I got back from the women’s doubles training camp in Sigulda…my future husband was really excited for me to get back. My son, Levi, just wants to play with me. It’s “Momma, Momma…” so I don’t have a lot of free time when I get back.
I like to do things where I can calm down a little. It was hard for me to go away during the season and realize my boys weren’t with me. When I came back it was hard to realize I’m home now and I don’t have the part of my life where I can close the door and be myself, and everyone instead is asking for more and more of my time!
Sometimes I just want to sit down and watch TV or Netflix and just calm down, but right now there’s no real time in my life for that. So right now no special vacations…we’re building a house right now and now I’m getting ready for the new season.
There’s a lot to do with my new doubles partner to get her ready for the life of luge on the World Cup with media, TV and the broadcasts and everything. We have a lot of tasks we have to get done as well.
I just call it “life!”
You’ve been so successful as a singles athlete, what led to the move to doubles luge?
The first answer I got from other nations was “Oh…she’s going to win everything now!” I can also say it’s not quite as easy as expected. The first time my coach, Patric Leitner, was asking me in May of last year…he was giving me a lot of encouragement: “Hey…this is going to be the best for you…we have a partner for you! And I promise you can win everything you want!” and I told him “Okay Patric…no!”
When I look at the men, and they do doubles, it looks so professional. With the women, it’s a nice story, but the sport has to grow up some still. So I said I wanted to just do singles…but he asked every week if I wanted to do it! Then he was very silent…and I told him if it would be Olympic sport I would think about it.
And my partner, Saskia Schirmer, she’s 19 years old and very young! She’ll need to know after 2026 I’m done. It doesn’t matter if we’re in the Olympics or not, that will be the end of my time in sport. I wanted to make sure we tried it last year before the season started. I didn’t want to get her hopes up and then after the first run go “Oh, I’m sorry, I don’t like this.”
So the IOC said we’d have women’s doubles in the Olympics, so I said “Patric, give me a sled and we’ll try it,” and we go to Lillehammer for the first time. After our first run I looked at Saskia and said “okay, this isn’t fun!” It’s just like driving a truck. Singles is a lot like a go-kart, and doubles…I’m a truck driver now!
But I saw how easy it is…we can change in a short time and we could be very successful. I’m also 32 years old. I have the experience and I can do this…and I want to get to the Olympics. Also, the younger ladies will continue to get better toward 2026. This past season we had five or six girls who can fight for the podium, and I love the fight! But the potential to grow the women’s doubles, it’s more realistic where I could fight for a medal in the Olympics.
And after the second training I told Patric “Okay, we’ll do this!” And I can slide a little more free and without as much pressure. I think that’s part of why I’ve been so successful, and now I can slide free!
How did you get involved in luge? I know you grew up around it, was it just that it was there and you wanted to do it?
Yes! I was born in Ilmenau, it’s a very historic city for bobsled and luge and the history of bobsled. It’s the most successful city in the world producing lugers. Andre Lange also comes from Ilmenau, so we have a really big sliding history.
When I was in primary school, one of my first coaches came along and we had school competitions. And at first I said I didn’t want to do it, but then a couple years later I gave it a shot and since then that’s all I’ve done.
So I grew up in the sport, went to a special school for sport, went to the army and everything.
Your first season back after having Levi you slid as well as you ever have. How hard was the process to get back from having a child?
After the birth of Levi in the summer of 2020 it was really hard for me, because I had to start at the very beginning. It was tough, because the results were so bad at first. I was ashamed about it…I’m an athlete and I know what I can do, but my body wasn’t there.
I settled down, and that was the point where I was at the start, and now where could we go? Of course athletic training for me was hard, with the tests and things like that, but the coaches wanted to see me want to fight for it. And we wanted to have the possibility to get back to fighting for the selection to the team, and I ended up being better than the younger sliders.
The luge team is also very grateful for just being able to slide well. They weren’t concerned with how many pullups or pushups I could do, as long as I was sliding fast. It’s a bonus for me that I have so much experience behind me.
I’m also able to separate myself some. When I’m in the competition, I’m very focused on that. When competition is over and I’m back at home I don’t really think about the competition anymore.
For me it’s important to get back to that home life very fast, because Levi doesn’t care why I didn’t so fast or didn’t win a medal. He’s just excited for me to be home for cuddle time and playing with his cars. The family shows me what the real life outside of the bubble is.
What is your routine the night before a race? Do you have a particular meal or anything you like to eat?
Most of the time I want to be alone and with myself. For me it’s hard to read messages like “Okay you will win this!” It’s like you’re only thinking about that and you’re not happy if it doesn’t happen. So at the 2018 Olympics, I put my cell phone into airplane mode and didn’t read anything, I just had my music. It seems like I want to be alone, but I’m really concentrating for a special race.
My routine doesn’t really start just before a race, too. I try to get my biorhythm right for the whole week when I have competition. I look to make sure that I’m not hungry and fall into a hole like that…it could be dangerous for a lot of people if I’m hungry! So I try to keep a routine for every week through the season.
So it was a little hard for me to come right home and everyone is jumping on me and I have to tell them “No, no, no, please leave me alone just for 15 minutes!”
Everyone has a curve or set of curves that they really don’t like. Which curve on which track is your least favorite?
I was thinking about this…usually it’s Curve 9! When I think about Altenberg and World Champs next season it’s always 10, 11, 12, 13 that make a heartbreak! But nothing special.
Every track has the possibility to do something a little different for their athletes, so I don’t think about it too much. If I have problems with a curve or set of curves I’ll try to adjust my setup to deal with it.
What has been your very favorite sliding sport memory?
When I think back to the 2015 European Championship, I know it’s a while back, but it was my very first World Cup win and the European Championship. I never expected to be atop the podium, so it was a very emotional moment. Also the 2018 Olympics, I can remember the emotions running through my body the whole time.
Of course it was hard to prepare for the World Championships last year at my home track, everyone expected me to be the World Champion and win everything because I grew up there. The Sprint was a very tough race, but the time was on my side and that was also really emotional.
The 2018 Olympics had a very different track from a lot of you. Did you feel like you had a medal win there?
No! I had a lot of luck I would say. The year before we had a World Cup there and an international training week. And I couldn’t sleep a lot because I was thinking about Curve 9, and I didn’t have the right thing for one or two runs let alone four runs.
But then I thought about Felix (Loch) with three perfect runs and then one run where he had a lot of trouble. I had two and a half good runs, but I had planned for a lot of situations. I had Plan A, B, C, all the way to Z how to handle different situations. My luck was that we had the qualification in our team for the Olympics, and in the international training week and we had a one run qualification run in two days, and it was the first run of the training. So I had the possibilities to go perfectly through this puzzle. I think if we had a second run I didn’t think it would be the happy story I’d want written!
On the other side, what is your very least favorite sliding sport memory?
In the 2021/2022 season when I was sick at home with COVID and couldn’t take part in the World Cup races in Innsbruck. I wasn’t able to go to the Olympics…when I got back into the competition I crashed twice and wasn’t able to go.
Then we went back home…and I was crying the whole time, about 550km. And I was wondering why is it always me that has to handle situations like this? But the most time think everything is good for another reason, and this was good for me to stand up and show everyone that it’s not life. When I think about it, there are more important things in life. I had a very hard decision to make when I came from the Olympics, in my mind I was the second in the world, and I wanted to be the overall world cup champion. But then I was sick every two weeks, and I had to decide if I wanted to quit sport then, or if I wanted to try to get better.
At that time I met Chris, and he said if I wanted to do this he understood but I couldn’t do it in Oberhof. He wasn’t sure if it was the right place for me…so he took me to Munich and I changed everything. Then when I settled down in Munich I was pregnant! It just grew my experience.
