(May 31, 20221) – For our first athlete profile of 2021 (and the 23rd in the “Getting to Know…” series), we catch up with USA Luge’s Summer Britcher. Summer is a two-time Olympian who has a pile of World Cup medals to her name, including five gold medals, making her the winningest singles slider in USA Luge history. An perennial overall points contender, Summer has finished in second in the Spring World Cup standings and third twice in the overall World Cup standings.
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Slider: Summer Britcher
Team: USA Luge
Home track: Lake Placid
Hometown: Glen Rock, PA, USA
We’ll kick this off like we do every time: What’s your favorite track, and why?
I at least know myself well enough to know the truth of it: My favorite track is normally the most recent track that I’ve been successful on! But this past season was pretty tough with COVID and everything, so I would say right now it’s probably still Lillehammer.
You all seem to do pretty well there, you usually start your season there a lot of the time, right?
Yeah, most of the tour goes out there to start their season in the fall. It’s just really nice ice and it’s usually the first time back on ice after the offseason. It’s beautiful there, we get to stay in these nice condos, and it’s just such good energy around sliding there! We have the Lillehammer Cup in the fall and the past couple of times we’ve been there I’ve raced with the men from the men’s start, which I just enjoy doing. Then when we go back there for World Cup and I race back down at the women’s start I feel like I have this advantage that everyone else is just choosing to not give themselves.
Unrelated to the track itself, what’s your favorite town to visit on tour?
I really like Sochi. It’s a pain in the butt to get there, but it’s a nice little town. We don’t get to go there very often but it’s a beautiful little ski town with a lot of shops and restaurants, and I just like it there.
You competed in the Olympics there, how much has that area changed since 2014?
Not that much actually. When I first went out there in 2013 for training weeks before the Olympics they were still trying to get everything built up and finished, and I thought it would be a bit of a ghost town afterwards like most people did, but Russia did a good job actually using these facilities and turning them over into something sustainable. It’s really good to see because there’s a lot of talk with different Olympic constructions if they’re going to be used going forward. It’s like a crowded ski town now, so it’s still a similar feeling to being there for the Olympics.
You’ve been to two Olympics now, what has been your driving motivation between each Games?
I didn’t have any issues with motivation on working toward Pyeongchang after the Sochi Olympics, obviously my huge goal was to go to the Olympics and I wanted to be the best and to win medals, to win an overall title, to win a World Championship, and win an Olympic medal. So for me, qualifying for the Sochi Olympics at a young age with no real hope to succeed was what just fed my motivation for the next four years. I was SUPER motivated for the quad leading up to Pyeongchang. It’s a little different story this quad for me, it’s been a lot harder to find the motivation after going to the Olympics as a medal contender and then failing to make that happen, and really just getting older within the sport.
It’s been a lot of reframing how I go about things for training and not putting the pressure on myself to be so motivated. I think within sport there’s all of this push like “Look at athletes they’re so motivated! They’re so driven! That’s so great, they’re so competitive!” and that was always me but I felt really guilty still being in sport and not feeling that way. I still want to be here, I still want to compete, and I still have all of these goals but trying to be an athlete without that insane, crazy drive and motivation, I felt guilty. It took me a while to realize that it’s okay if I just enjoy doing this a lot still, and still want to work hard and succeed, but I’m not the same that I was when I was 22. So that was just a big shift into this quad.
Do you have any standout moments from each of the two Games you’ve been to?
From Sochi everything was just magical there. From opening ceremonies to competing it was all great. I remember my first competitive run, I’d a tough time in training, and I was sitting at the start handles about to poop my pants because I was so scared, not so much because of the track but because it’s the Olympics and everyone is watching! They had this fancy camera that was going in front of me and I was thinking “DON’T LOOK AT THE CAMERA DON’T LOOK AT THE CAMERA!” And all of my focus was on that so when I finally looked at it I gave the dumbest little smile.
I can still remember you winking at the camera before one of your later runs
I embraced it on the final three runs! But for that first run I gave this stupid smile. And I was so scared going into that run and then after the 50 seconds of that run it was the biggest shift. I went from the most nervous I’ve ever been in my life to the most joy, it was everything you want as an athlete. You think “Oh man, I’m competing at the Olympics!” So the whole thing was amazing.
Pyeongchang was a bit of a different story…it’s tough to come up with one positive moment!
You do have the track record!
I do have a track record! That was a little bittersweet. Almost like rubbing dirt into a wound. I made some really good friends in the aftermath of the competition, they were going through the same thing of being disappointed with their performance. That’s not really a fun thing to be going through. Track record was pretty cool, though.
Last season’s COVID season was weird. How hard was it watching from the sidelines for the first half of the season? And how did it change your outlook for the second half of the season when you were able to get out there?
I really wanted to go compete, actually. So leading up to that first World Cup I was really upset, I didn’t really want to train, I was just really demotivated to not be competing and knowing that I wasn’t going to be competing. I was really not happy to not be competing, I didn’t really agree entirely with the decision for us to sit out, but I couldn’t do anything about that unfortunately. So leading up to it I felt really unhappy, but once I saw the rest of the world start competing I was kind of surprised because I didn’t have any negative thoughts about it at all. It was actually kind of fun to just be able to watch and not be a part of it in a way. I had no skin in the game, I could watch these women I am usually competing against and normally am trying to beat, and just be cheering them on. It was kind of fun! It makes retirement feel a little less scary, like it was a little bit of a tester!
Coming into the second half of the season knowing that I didn’t have a realistic shot at an overall place after missing half of the season, and that we’d only trained in Lake Placid, we were just in a tough spot going in. I was trying to make the most of the part of the season we did race and not let it hurt me too much going into this coming season.
When the season’s over, what do you like to do with the little period from the end of the season to the beginning of the next season’s training?
Normally I just like to not be tied down by training or anything for April, normally. In March we’re usually still sliding in Lake Placid, so I like to be really dramatic about that training! I will only slide on days when I really want to, which really annoys my teammates and some of my coaches! They’re like “Why don’t you just slide all of these sessions?” And my thought is just that everyone who’s in sliding sports loves it to some extent, but even if you do love a sport if you do it every day you can end up hating it sometimes. So I try to be really intentional about those couple of weeks in the springtime and be like “Okay, I’m going to trick my brain into continuing to love this by only doing this when I’m happy about it!” So if I wake up one morning and I feel like I’d rather go skiing or just have a rest day, I don’t go train. It’s a nice kind of rewiring, ending the season with just good thoughts.
In April I like to go visit friends, go on vacation and go to the beach or whatever. This year obviously we couldn’t do too much of that so I went on a little trip then started training earlier than normal.
You’d mentioned starting from the men’s start. You’ve been more vocal about “Why don’t we all start from the men’s start?!” Has it been discussed among the other women’s athletes?
I feel like I’m in a tough position with this because about three years ago I was elected as one of the FIL athlete representatives so I used to be a lot more vocal about it because it was just me speaking up and complaining about it. But now I can’t push too much for it because a lot of people don’t really want that change. When I do still bring it up and talk about it I say “You know, this is just ridiculous!” Maybe on some tracks there’s something to be said about the men going at a higher speed with more pressure, but there’s no real consistency. The only consistency is that women have to start lower than the men, some women’s start heights are faster than the men’s start heights at other tracks so there’s just no logic to it.
When I’ve brought it up with other people on tour, a lot of the men are vocal about it too. They’ll say “I don’t know any women that want to go up to the top, name woman who wants to go off the top at Sigulda,” and my point is “Okay, well name one man!’ When you ask them “at what point did you want to go up in Sigulda?” and they go “well no, of course not!” The men have to do that to be successful and had that support at a younger age, which developed them into that slider. But it kind of gets through to them then when I say “Did you want to go off the men’s start at Königsse?” and they’re like “I didn’t!” so it takes away their one point of women not wanting to go up.
Luge athletes tend to start a little younger than their bobsled/skeleton brethren, when did you know you wanted to slide?
I think most of us kind of come across it by accident, really for all three sliding sports. I don’t think anyone really grows up to think they’re going to be a luger or a bobsledder or whatever. But I always knew I wanted to be an Olympian, in the same sense that I also wanted to be an astronaut and the president. So it’s easy to pick the one that happened! But I kind of came across it in sixth grade, there was a little fun event at a ski mountain in PA and they said I should go up to Lake Placid and try out for the development team. “You could maybe go to the Olympics one day!” And I thought that would be great, and I’d get to be out of school for a wek week and any 11 year old is excited about that! When I came up and got on the track…it’s easy to look back now and say “Oh yeah I wanted to do it and commit my whole life to it and be super serious about it!” but in reality it’s something I just really enjoyed and had a vague sense of commitment. At the time I just wanted to be invited back to the next camp and the next event and spend more time doing it. And then at some point it shifts to “Okay, I’m taking this seriously now,” but I definitely had fun right away!
What are you watching right now on Netflix/TV, is there anything you’re really enjoying?
Well, I’m watching the Handmaid’s Tale, but I’m not really enjoying it because it’s horrible but really good! I don’t think anyone enjoys it! I watched Army of the Dead, it’s a new zombie movie on Netflix, it’s very good! I normally watch a ton of Netflix but I haven’t been watching lately. I’m a big Gilmore Girls fan, it’s one of my go-to shows during the stress of a season, it’s my comfort show. Grey’s Anatomy is usually up there, but they’ve been really drawing that out, I just hope they end it soon!
It seems like every year I see Grey’s Anatomy promos and I think “They’re still doing this?”
They are, but they shouldn’t be! I know it’s wrong for a Grey’s Anatomy fan to say that but it’s just too much!
You’ve started doing some gardening, what are you growing? Do you talk to Brittney Arndt about it?
Brittney and I talk a lot about various gardening stuff, as well as with Ashley [Farquharson] and Chevonne [Forgan] also, I live in the same building as Ashley and Chevonne and we have a little community garden going which is cool! Mostly I’m just growing tomatoes, I’m really good at growing them and just really bad at growing everything else. So that’s what I stick with. This is kind of my quarantine hobby, I never thought I would be into gardening, it’s not really something that’s my thing. But last spring everything shut down and a friend said “Hey, I’ve got some tomato seeds if you want to plant them,” and I thought “Hey, why not?” I loved it, and all winter I ordered all my stuff and I was ready for the day I got back from tour. I got all of my seeds going as soon as I got back and it’s been really great! Maybe next year I’ll branch out to something else.
Do you have a specific type of tomato you’re growing?
I have a variety of heirloom tomatoes! It’s a couple of different weird ones, the packet described them as “the most delicious but ugliest tomatoes you’ll ever grow!”
You’ve gone from being one of the younger athletes on the team to now being the seasoned veteran that people are looking up to and asking advice from. When did you know you’d become that person, and how much do you enjoy it?
I don’t know how much they actually come to me for advice, but I definitely love giving advice! I think that shift happened pretty quickly after the Pyeongchang Olympics because so many athletes retired. I was like “Oh, now I’m the old one!” You realize one thing pretty quickly, like I’d see these athletes doing something and I’d give them unsolicited advice and they just nod along while not really listening, it made me realize I owe an apology to a lot of my previously older teammates! I don’t remember the advice that they were trying to give me, but I remember that they were trying to give me advice and me not listening and thinking “No, I know what I’m doing.” And I did not.
Specifically Matt Mortensen comes to mind, he was very much always trying to give advice. He had so much great advice to give and I would just not listen to anything. And now I feel like “Yup, I deserve this now.” But it seems to come full circle, I enjoy giving advice but it really makes me shake my head at my younger self!
What has been your favorite sliding sport memory?
It has to be the 2015/2016 World Cup race in Lake Placid when myself, Emily Sweeney and Erin Hamlin swept the podium. It was Erin’s first World Cup win and Erin and I’s first World Cup podium. I’ll never beat that, the only way that could ever be touched is maybe an Olympic medal or something. I’ve won World Cup races since then, I’ve gotten a podium in the overall since then, but that one World Cup can’t be touched. Sharing a podium with teammates is truly the best feeling.
On the other side of that, what has been your toughest sliding sport memory?
It’s going to have to be the Peyongchang Olympic team relay. It was really tough. A lot of emotions to have in a couple of minutes. There’s all of these pictures of our team celebrating, we thought we’d done enough to get a medal, but it wasn’t quite enough. It’s tough to be so close, and that was a tough one. But that’s sport!
Question from Kendall Wesenberg (USA Skeleton): “I hear the US Luge Team plays some pretty serious pond hockey. Who is the best player on your team and who is the best team combo?
I am definitely not the best player on the team, however when we played a series of games of two-on-two, my team was undefeated!
And that’s all that matters! It’s a team sport, you’re on the team!
Jonny Gustafson is probably the best! He’s the best on the team for sure. We had team names that Jonny and I had made for both ourselves and the other team of Emily Sweeney and our coach Bengt Walden. So Jonny and I were Team YAS, and Emily and Bengt were Team BAO. YAS stood for “Young And Sexy”, and BAO was “Broken And Old”, so they didn’t love the team names so much, but we were undefeated like that. There was one tie game but the rest were wins for us.
I’m pretty bad at hockey, but it worked out for me! Jonny is really good, Emily and Bengt are okay, and I’m kind of bad, but we worked out well as a team!
Followup question from Kendall: Pancakes or waffles?
I’m going to have to go with pancakes, I think they’re just better. I think I like the texture more. “Pancakes and waffles” is also a game that Kendall introduced to us on a road trip, and you can only have one or the other. We play this game when we travel from track to track sometimes, and it’s a super depressing game over time because what happens is that you start with “Pancakes or waffles”, then the next person gets “pancakes or…” and you pick something else like coffee or whatever, but now waffles do not exist in this fictional world. So it just keeps going one thing pitted against another until you end up in a world where there’s no fun or sunshine! But it’s good for road trips and it can get quite thought provoking, but it starts out so innocent as just “pancakes or waffles”.
