More than 20 years ago, Duncan Kennedy and Jon Owen as young men looking to learn a little about the sport of luge. These days they are building Olympic champions together.
Kennedy and Owen, the East and West Coast counterparts for USA Luge, are spending a lot of time together this week. Since last weekend, their developmental athletes have been taking to the Utah Olympic Park (UOP) track for the U.S. Youth and Junior National Championships.
Although they live in different parts of the country Kennedy in Lake Placid, N.Y. and Owen in Park City — these two are no strangers to each other. They’ve been together a long time. They were both members of the U.S. Luge Team 20 ago and even competed in the 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary together, helping to build up the sport in America.
Both were bitten by the luge bug during the 1980 Lake Placid Olympics, but had no idea how to get into this slightly obscure sport. Owen, a native of Bethel, Maine, tried to get into the sort via a letter writing campaign to anybody who seemed like they might know about luge. But he never heard a response. A few years later, he went to a family reunion in Lake Placid, with a friend and went to Main Street in search of a luge T-shirt. He found a deli selling T-shirts that coincidentally was owned by the heads of the Adirondack Luge Club the only group in America competing in the sport at the time. Owen expressed his interest and the rest is history. Kennedy decided to give the sport a shot as a young teenager after his family moved to Lake Placid.
The early 1980s were the “Ice Age” of luge in America. There was no USA Luge yet and Owen and Kennedy were building their own sleds. There was no such thing as a development team or any training model it was just build as you go but the two made it work and fared pretty well in international competition.
These days, they are still building the sport in this country. Neither exactly planned on being the sports next development coaches, but they know luge like few others in this country and are committed to making it better.
As the regional directors for their respective coasts, they head up youth development programs, producing the next generation of Olympic stars. But it’s a team effort through and through.
The Park City track and the Lake Placid ice are two very different animals. The UOP track is built for speed. Designed very specifically for the Olympics in 2002, it is short, uniform and fast. The Lake Placid track was built recently and was designed as a teaching tool. It is longer, winding and demands very technical skills. That means that aspiring athletes get the best training if they spend time on both tracks. Lake Placid also boasts a training center and the UOP does not, so all sliders should spend some time in New York.
Then there’s the annual USA Luge Slider Search a nationwide tour to find future talent where kids are invited to take a ride on a luge with wheels. Kids can be selected from anywhere, even warm-weather states like Florida or Texas, then go to Lake Placid to give the sport a whirl. But if they are from the West, training in Park City may make more sense. For example, there’s junior national slider Kate Hansen, a Californian who has been posting big results. Although she originally went to Lake Placid for her initial sliding runs, her parent’s condo in Park City brought her to the UOP and now the local community claims her as its own.
The programs’ designs are a little different as well. With the UOP’s proximity to a city center, Owen runs an after-school program for Parkites and Salt Lakers and Wasatch County youth. Lake Placid, of course, is a bit more remote. That means Kennedy runs more clinics and camps, making it easy for kids to try a little of both programs as their schedules allow.
“It’s really complimentary,” Kennedy said.
The bottom line is making the sport better in the United States. There is no luge little league in America. No ice tracks in everyone’s back yard. So Kennedy and Owen must work together to ensure that young luge athletes get every opportunity they can. That means sending kids back and forth for camps and training sessions and cheering for the growth of the sport as a whole rather than individual athletes.
“Let’s face it,” Kennedy said. “In our culture, it’s not exactly easy to get people involved in this sport. It’s a common goal we’re striving for Olympic medals.”
That said, Owen admits that he still gets excited to see the kids who train in his program do well in big luge competitions like the one this week.
“You always want your kids to win,” he said.
And there are always a handful of kids that just train on one track for quite awhile. A couple of the Lake Placid kids just saw the UOP track for the first time this week, and Kennedy said that they love the variety.
Both are hoping that next year’s Winter Olympics will also grow the sport. Although it’s not in the States, Whistler, Canada is a drivable destination for a lot of Americans and should give the sport an interest boost. Television coverage should also help. But for now, Owen and Kennedy are making the best with the dedicated youth they’ve got and are getting plenty of good shared results in the process.
Some of Owen and Kennedy’s athletes will take to the track this weekend, Saturday and Sunday, at 9 a.m. for the U.S. Junior National Championships. Many of these kids are on the U.S. Junior National Team and some even train with the national team. That means that in just a few years from now, they will likely be the next Olympians trying to slide for an American medal. There are also many local kids from Park City, Wasatch County and Salt Lake among the mix, giving spectators plenty to cheer about.
For more information about the national championships, visit www.olyparks.com.