(September 20, 2023) – For our seventh athlete profile of 2023 (and the 45th in the “Getting to Know…” series) we talk to USA Luge’s Reannyn Weiler. Reannyn is one half of the women’s doubles team of (Maya) Chan & Weiler who have been competing on the World Cup tour over the past few years. In the 2022/2023 season the duo finished the season in fourth place in the Sprint World Cup and in seventh place overall.
Slider: Reannyn Weiler
Team: USA Luge
Home town: Whitesboro, NY, USA
Home track: Lake Placid
Everyone has one, so what is your favorite track and why?
My favorite track would probably be Park City. For me, I think that’s where I’m most comfortable. The setting there is great, and it feels like more of a home track than Lake Placid.
Second to that, it would probably be St. Moritz. I haven’t been there since the Youth Olympics, but it’s really just such a different track. It’s different feeling, it’s unique from all the rest, so it’s probably right up there!
How was your Youth Olympic Games experience?
Youth Olympics was a great starting point, I would say. It was really fun in a sense in that we got to meet some people from different sports. We were kind of in a smaller Olympic village there, we were with only a few sports. Mostly sliding sports and then long track speed skating. It was kind of that close group of people, but we kind of knew some of those people already.
The competition…it was really my first big event. There were cameras there, it was being filmed and everything, so it was a big learning thing. It wasn’t our perfect race, but at that point we were 16 and 17, you’re not going to be perfect at that age. It was a really good starting point, and a really cool experience!
Where is your favorite place on tour to visit?
I really like our North America places. Those are my comfort places, everyone speaks English and it’s familiar, and there’s a sense that it feels more comfortable and close to home. So I like Park City, there’s a lot of cool shopping there and the area is really pretty there. They decorate really nice for Christmas too!
Whistler is really cool, too. We did some shopping there this year, and it’s a cute village!
If you could travel one place in particular you’ve always wanted to and haven’t, where would it be?
When I was growing up we’d always go to Florida, that was always our vacation. My parents are there now, so that’s kind of been a great experience.
I’d really like to go to California. I’m really into movies and film…I went once for a couple days to visit a friend and it was great, so I’d like to go back. I’m trying to get my parents to go out with me, so we’ll see how that goes!
Is there somewhere in California that you really need to see?
They have various film tours and stuff…Universal has a great studio tour that I’ve been on but I’d really like to take my parents there. I want to go to Hollywood and the general Las Angeles area!
How did you get involved in luge?
I had a similar experience to a lot of athletes through the White Castle Slider Search program. I’d done gymnastics for a number of years. My dad worked at a school where Erin Hamlin’s mother worked, and she was like “Oh, your daughter’s a gymnast, she’s athletic and might be good at luge!”
So the slider search came to the Utica area and I did that, and I actually didn’t get picked from that one! I waited around and they went to Plattsburgh. I decided I was going to go try again because I had a lot of fun at it. I got picked from that one to go to the screening camp. How it works is if you get picked from our slider search, you go to a screening camp, and from there you make the development team. Once you make that there’s various teams you slowly work your way up.
That’s kind of the path I took, and Erin Hamlin’s mother is really the reason I’m involved at that point. If she wasn’t from my area I probably wouldn’t be doing this!
What was it like going from singles to doubles luge?
My first year was all singles luge. There were talks about women’s doubles coming as a new category at that point. But at that level we weren’t really hearing what was going on internationally. But then our coach sat us all down that summer…I think there was six of us…and he was like “okay, we’re going to try to make a couple of doubles teams.”
So Maya and I got paired up that got paired up right away, and there was a couple of other teams. All three of us teams went out to Utah and tried it. And it was crazy…it wasn’t exactly the greatest of camps and it turns out we were the only team that stuck with it after. But that first experience…our first run was a lot of fun then we started moving up. But we crashed that same camp and I ended up ripping a bunch of skin and I had to get some stitches. My knee was cut up…it was about the size of my palm. But once I was healed up we went right back to doubles.
Pretty early on we were in Calgary and we told our coach Larry (Dolan) we just wanted to do doubles, and didn’t want to do singles anymore. And usually you don’t make that decision on your own, but we did! He let us do that, and that’s just what we ended up doing! It’s a little different than the pathway now, but it was interesting.
Did you know Maya that well before hand?
We were friends…we weren’t like best friends. It’s not like that’s how we got paired up, we knew each other though. She was a year younger than me…but it was mostly based off of “I’m short, Maya’s tall…” more than anything. Then obviously we’ve gotten closer over the years and know a lot about each other and see each other all the times.
Do you have a particular curve/set of curves somewhere that you just can’t get?
My biggest one would be Curves 11 through the exit of 14 in Sigulda. Everything has to be so precise, and we had the worst crashes in that part of the track. We broke our sled in that part, it was just overall not my favorite part of the track. And in my head I know exactly what to do, but it just wasn’t working when we were there. Hopefully we’ll get some redemption in that part and hopefully my answer will change, but for now that’s my answer!
What was it like moving to the new FIL standardized sled?
With the standardized sled, it was introduced during our second year of doing doubles. We had an American doubles sled before that. The first version of the sled that came out…the measurements were just off for everyone on it. We had to kind of make it work, our coaches had to cut some things to make it work okay. We’d get all the parts you’d needed for the sled, and everything came with it at that point.
So that was the first version. The second version they corrected those errors, but it was the same look of sleds. The second sled fit us a little better, but the problem was that it was so narrow. And that’s still our issue with it, I think they’re trying to work on that…they can change the length of them but when you order them they’re still the same width. There’s a small/medium/large option, and you can make modifications a little bit with it but there’s till that width issue.
The newest version just comes with the pod itself, but you have a lot more ability to build onto the sled, but not everyone has that yet. Everyone’s trying to get the new version, but I don’t know what the status is going to be as far as if it’s going to be permanent after the Olympics or what. But right now most everyone’s just trying to get their sleds shipped on time. The shipping has been the huge issue with the standardized sled. So hopefully they can fix that and make it more accessible. You need the sled, obviously, and you need the standardized one.
Tell me about your pets.
I have four cats! I have two girl cats, Libby and Lilly and I’ve had them since I was 7 years old. One is a bengal, so if anyone knows about cats they know she’s super funny and entertaining. Then we have two boy cats that we just got a year ago, we have an orange one named Pumpkin who’s super fat and then a fluffy guy named Felix!
(Photos below, left to right: Libby, Lilly, Pumpkin, Felix…all very good kitties)
What is the very best thing you’ve ever eaten?
Down in Florida there’s this one hibachi place…I can’t have fish or anything, but they have sushi rolls that have steak! So that’s my favorite….it’s steak sushi!
During the training portion of the offseason what is a typical day like for you?
Typically right now, when we’re in offseason training, we’ll usually lift about three days a week. Right now I’m getting back from an injury so I’m not doing it right now, but we’d do start training and weight lifting. That’s kind of our main component during the summer. So that builds into our day.
Typically in the morning we’ll do the bulk of that in the morning. We’ll go to the hockey rink and do flat-ice training and a lot of paddling around. The rest of the time during the day, a lot of people have jobs and things or have time to go to sports medicine to get that kind of work done.
I’m doing college over the summer and working on my bachelors degree. When I’m not training I’m working on that.
What are you in college for?
I’m getting a film degree with an online program in Orlando! It’s called “Digital Cinematography”, but pretty much we’re learning all of the more broad avenues of it and a generalized approach. It was great that I found an online program in something that I’ve always wanted to do so I don’t have to wait until I’m done with luge to get that college education. I really enjoy that a lot!
Do you listen to anything before a run, if so, what?
Typically I’ll have my airpods on. Right now I’m liking country music, I kind of grew up on it and my family listens to it so it’s more of a comfort thing. But I like something that’s repetitive in the background on loop that’s the same thing. Nothing that’s too crazy or anything, and nothing too deep or anything. I just like the same repetitive thing.
Do you have a particular “go-to” song?
Not really! I don’t have anything specific, but I think it changes with whatever’s new and that’s what I put on. If I get sick of it I’ll mix it up, but it’s more to be a little distracted.
When you’re at the track you have to laser-focus before a run, and some people just want to let their mind relax and wander, which are you?
I go back and forth between this. If it’s a tougher track I need to just have my moment of focus on everything. I think it just depends on my mood going into the race. Sometimes I need to not think about it…if I know there’s a chance we can do well I don’t want to think about it. I want to just go off and do my thing.
On the other hand if it’s Sigulda or something like that, I need to think about exactly what I need to do. That’s where the focus comes in and I don’t want any distractions. So I think it just depends on the track.
What’s been your favorite sliding sport memory so far?
For me it would probably be our first World Cup medal. It was in Igls the season prior during that interesting year where we had a junior circuit but had a senior women’s doubles circuit going on at the same time. So you could potentially medal in both. But what mattered was that senior result…the junior result would be nice to get but what we really wanted was the senior result.
We were in the medals after our first run, I want to say in second or third. So we were in it after the first run, and then we had a clean second run. And when you know you’re in it after the first run and if you have that clean second run you’ll get the medal. So we had that clean second run, and we were both really excited and it gave us a lot of confidence. From there we went to Oberhof and medaled twice there.
So I think that was our first really big confidence booster and us moving forward in our careers!
On the other side, what’s been your toughest experience?
It had to be this season in Sigulda. Going into the World Cup you have a couple days of training. We hadn’t really been to Sigulda prior to this and it’s a pretty tough track to walk onto the first time. We were doing training, and it was like 50/50 that we’d crash, but they weren’t bad crashes. But then we had one really bad crash…I think it was Curve 13 into 14…and we got maybe six feet in the air then down. And it knocked the wind out of both of us, my back hurt, we broke our sled…and those sleds are kind of indestructible. We’d put that thing through a lot and it had never failed us, and it broke!
So we were just crying after that, it was pretty traumatic! Our coaches were great and said there was no pressure to race that week. We had a second World Cup race the next week there anyway. So we took that weekend off and both laid in bed the next day because we were both sore everywhere.
Our coaches did a track walk with us afterward, and were really supportive of us. We ended up crashing in the race, but got back on to finish. And it was like “Well that crash can’t happen twice” but it did! We caught the same amount of air and everything! So that was the hardest two weeks I’ve had.
Not everyone realizes that after you crash you have to try to right the sled and get going again! What’s the mindset like on the back half of that?
The thing about a doubles sled is that it’s so hard to get back upright and back on. It really depends on how you crash in a doubles sled as to if you can get back on and if you have enough momentum to go based on where you are on the track.
We’ve only been able to flip ourselves back over maybe two other times, so it was surprising we were able to in Sigulda. We were in a good part of the track where Maya could get her leg over to flip the sled…we’re not good at flipping the sled over so I think it surprised us a little!
But we were going out of 14 and had no speed or momentum. We were both mad…but I’m really impressed that we got back over. But it’s a really defeating thing going down at like two miles an hour and you don’t know if you’re going to get across the line!