‘Team Chris’ brings the noise to luge
Photos
WHISTLER, British Columbia - No other Olympic luger at the track Saturday had a fan club as loud as Saranac Lake's Chris Mazdzer.
The nine-member "Team Chris," consisting of family and friends, blew horns, led cheers, sat on each other's shoulders, waved U.S. flags, wore matching homemade T-shirts and unfurled a banner with Mazdzer's name. They had been there for almost five hours, and their sustained energy and volume were amazing.
"We've been holding it all together," said Neil Streiff, a friend of Chris from back in the Adirondacks.
They weren't just cheering for their favorite luger. They spelled out Vancouver and Whistler with the old, "Give me a V!" cheer, a tribute to the Olympic hosts.
When Tony Benshoof finished his second heat, they chanted his name raucously, prompting the Minnesotan to grin and pump his fist. But after that, the chant became, "We want Chris!"
They were fully wild by the time Mazdzer finished his run and kept it up for a long, long time. The Saranac Lake racer was smiling so much he could barely talk to a NBC television crew, which ended up mostly just focusing on "Team Chris" on the other side of the tube.
"It's amazing," said Mazdzer's elated father, Dr. Ed Mazdzer. "It's great. We're having a gas."
On the first heat, the cheering section got a pleasant surprise: Mazdzer was the first racer down the track.
"You know it's kind of nice; I get to set the pace," Chris Mazdzer said after his second heat. "I've never been in an Olympics before, so I had a little bit of butterflies on the start. I definitely - man, I wish I had gone a little faster on the start."
When Saturday's two heats were done, German World Champion Felix Loch was in the lead, Benshoof led the Americans in seventh place, and Mazdzer was in 13th, one better than his best finish of the season on the World Cup tour. Lake Placid resident Bengt Walden was 15th. The final two heats will be Sunday.
"We'll be here tomorrow," Dr. Mazdzer said.
The men's start was moved down to the women's and doubles' start due to a crash in training Friday that killed Georgian luger Nodar Kumaritashvili - the first luge death on an artificial track in 35 years - and the move changed Saturday's competition drastically. The new start had a shallow pitch leading into a tight first curve, which favored those with the strongest push starts and also led to a lot of bouncing off the track walls, according to Sandy Caligiore, the U.S. Olympic Committee's spokesman for sliding sports and also the spokesman for USA Luge.
"You move it down, and the Germans have the best starts in the world," Caligiore said after Saturday's heats. "Now they put the ball in their court."
In addition, the women's and doubles starts will be moved down to the junior start ramp.
"The women's race and doubles race, the start will be the race," Caligiore said. "You're going to see some crazy stuff going on up there at slow speed."
The disturbing impact of the fatal crash stretched into other sports as well. It made Peter Frenette of Saranac Lake, father of the 17-year-old Olympic ski jumper by the same name, think of his son's crash in Germany at age 14. He reportedly stood up after the impact, screamed, fell unconscious and had to be taken to a hospital in a helicopter. He was in a medically induced coma due to brain trauma for a little while, and he missed about six months of jumping. But he got back into it, and his parents support that decision.
Nevertheless, the father said, if he was a luge parent right now, "I don't know what I'd do. My initial reaction would be (to go to his son and say), 'We're going home.' Dying certainly isn't part of the sport."
The young Peter Frenette said he wasn't really disturbed by news of the luge crash, but he added, "It just shows that anything can happen."
Whistler's track is already super-fast - its record is a full 5 seconds faster than Lake Placid's - but Mazdzer said he was surprised at how much faster it was Saturday night than it had been in training that morning, supposedly due to rain and humidity freezing on the ice as the weather cooled in the evening.
You must first login before you can comment.
