From Lake Placid, USA
(Sept. 21, 2022) – USA Luge announced their national teams for the coming 2022/2023 team, with a mix of veterans and younger sliders filling their tanks.
As the team always does, USA Luge is broken up into various ranks of teams, “A”, “B”, and “C” at the senior ranks, with further teams down the line at the youth ranks. The team’s A squad will be led by Olympians Summer Britcher and Tucker West. Joining them will be a pair of women’s doubles teams who will compete alongside on the main World Cup tour this season. The team of Chevonne Forgan and Sophie Kirkby will be joined by the team of Maya Chan and Reannyn Weiler. Forgan and Kirkby won bronze in the prior season’s women’s doubles world championships, with Chan and Weiler just behind them in fourth.
The team’s B team is full of athletes who are known to luge enthusiasts, with 2018 Olympic silver medalist Chris Mazdzer set to compete in a pair of World Cup events in the coming season. Olympians Ashley Farquharson, Emily Sweeney, Jonny Gustafson, and the duo of Zack DiGregorio and Sean Hollander will fill out the B squad ranks, most of whom are expected to compete over the full World Cup season.
The C squad will consist of Brittney Arndt and the team of Dana Kellogg and Duncan Segger.
The team’s coaching staff at the senior level will be Olympians Lubomir Mick and Kaspars Dumpis, with Martin Hillebrand joining as the team’s new start coach. Pat Anderson, Arturs Darznieks, Aidan Kelly and Jayson Terdiman will coach the various junior teams.
Full press release is below. The FIL World Cup season kicks off in Igls, Austria on December 3, 2022.
FULL RELEASE
By Lauren Howe/Gordy Sheer/Sandy Caligiore | Sept. 21, 2022, 1:16 p.m. (ET)
Chris Mazdzer, of Salt Lake City, Utah, has decided to continue his career, which includes a 2018 Olympic silver medal and four United States Olympic teams. He placed eighth in men’s singles in Beijing and seventh as a member of the team relay. Mazdzer, however, will not compete full-time in 2022-2023, opting to compete as a member of the “B” team in the Whistler and Park City World Cup events in December of this year.
Six athletes comprise the “A” team, including singles racers Tucker West and Summer Britcher, both three-time Olympians. West, of Ridgefield, Conn., recorded team relay silver and bronze medals last year in World Cup competition. Britcher, from Glen Rock, Pa., suffered an untimely broken finger just prior to the Winter Olympics, hampering her start technique and speed. She tallied a bronze medal in a World Cup team relay. Britcher has five World Cup career victories, the most in U.S. luge singles history.
Two women’s doubles teams complete the “A” team. World Championship bronze medal winners Chevonne Forgan, of Chelmsford, Mass., and Sophie Kirkby, of Ray Brook, N.Y. are joined by Maya Chan, of Chicago, and Reannyn Weiler, of Whitesboro, N.Y. The latter doubles team finished third overall in the women’s World Cup doubles standings last season, the first year in this new discipline.
Forgan/Kirkby also registered a pair of World Cup podium results, while Chan/Weiler had three World Cup bronze medals and a fourth place at the World Championship. The latter duo was also named to the Junior National “A”Team.
The National “B” team finds Ashley Farquharson, Emily Sweeney, Mazdzer, Jonny Gustafson, and the doubles team of Zack DiGregorio and Sean Hollander.
Farquharson, of Park City, Utah, in her Olympic debut, was 12th in the 2022 Olympic singles race and seventh as part of the team relay. She also collected her first career World Cup medal, a silver in the team relay last November.
Sweeney, of Lake Placid, battled the Olympic qualifying process last year. As a member of the Army’s World Class Athlete Program, she was not allowed to compete in Russia where two World Cup/Olympic qualifying events were held. Sweeney met the criteria for the Games with a fifth- place result in her next start.
Gustafson, of Massena, N.Y, was 19th in his first Olympic competition in Beijing. He placed in the top 15 in three World Cup competitions, racing early in the season with borrowed equipment due to lengthy transportation delays from Beijing to the resumption of the World Cup tour.
DiGregorio, of Medway, Mass., and Hollander, of Lake Placid, were the only U.S. doubles entry at the Olympics. The surprise qualifiers, who capitalized on a last-ditch opportunity when the Mazdzer/Jayson Terdiman duo crashed, gained significant experience in the month leading up to and through Beijing.On Terdiman’s borrowed sled in Beijing, DiGregorio/Hollander placed 11th in the doubles event and anchored a seventh place in the team relay.
Brittney Arndt, of Park City, Utah, after a season’s best 12th place World Cup, was named to the “C” team. The doubles sled of Dana Kellogg, of Chesterfield, Mass., and Duncan Segger, of Lake Placid, are in the Graduating Junior category. Kellogg underwent shoulder surgery at the end of the season and is now in rehabilitation.
Supporting the athletes will be a mix of returning and new staff members. Coaches Lubomir Mick and Kaspars Dumpis, Olympians for Slovakia and Latvia, respectively, will guide the team for the 2022-23 campaign. Mick has been a national team coach with USA Luge for the past nine years, while Dumpis served as assistant coach with the Junior National Team for the past three years. Pat Anderson will continue to serve as head coach of the Junior National Team after winning 17 medals in youth and junior events last season.
Martin Hillebrand has joined USA Luge as the National Team’s start coach. Hillebrand served as start coach for the German, Russian, Austrian, and Italian teams, coaching an almost countless amount of Olympic, World Championship and World Cup medals over four decades.
Bengt Walden, who coached with National Team since 2016, is taking a year sabbatical.
Anderson is supported by new hire Arturs Darznieks, who will serve as Junior National Team assistant coach. Darznieks is a 2018 and 2022 Olympian who raced for Latvia. Aidan Kelly, a 2014 Olympian, remains in charge of the Junior C and D Teams, while recently retired two-time Olympian Jayson Terdiman will split his time between all three Junior teams.
Caroline Kannel will travel with the National Team as their trainer, while Tori Lam will serve the same role for the Junior National Team.
The National Team is expected to hit the ice in early October for pre-season training in Europe. World Cup action will resume December 3-4 in Igls, Austria, when the nine-race season kicks off. The circuit will return to the U.S. for the first time since 2019 for theEBERSPÄCHER World Cupon December 16-17 in Park City, Utah. World Championships are slated to take place in Oberhof, Germany on January 27-29, 2023. Currently, the majority of the team are training in Lake Placid, working in the refrigerated luge start training facility and Olympic/Paralympic Training Center.
