I was 11 when I first tried luge. We were on a school trip to the Whistler Sliding Centre, home to the only official luge track in Canada and roughly half an hour from my home in Pemberton, British Columbia. It was love at first slide. I’m an adrenaline junkie, and I was immediately hooked on the thrill of shooting down the ice at over 120 kilometres per hour.

I began sliding after school, joining the provincial development group based out of Whistler. In 2016, when I turned 14, I was invited to train with the Canadian junior national team. I officially joined the following year. I made my Olympic debut at Beijing 2022, where I was the top Canadian in the women’s singles event, and I was also part of Canada’s relay team, which placed sixth.

Luging gives me a sense of mental clarity—a feeling of focus and presence that I haven’t been able to replicate anywhere else. For 40 to 60 seconds, the world goes quiet, and I am totally focused on executing my lines, shifting my body weight, pointing my toes and pushing my head back, trying to find the fastest path through the corners and straights on the track.

But luge training is demanding. Off-season training takes place in Calgary. We do strength training in the gym on Monday, Wednesday and Friday mornings. In the afternoons, we practise our starts in the Ice House at Canada Olympic Park. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, we do cardio workouts and prehab stability workouts. Our competition season begins in October and lasts until March. We spend a lot of that time on the road. We usually start at Whistler, where we do one or two sliding sessions a day for around two weeks. Then we travel to Europe, where many of the international competitions take place. We’ll spend around a month pre-season training on a variety of tracks, before the World Cup season begins mid-November. My most recent trip was to Winterberg, Germany, for the Luge World Cup.

Like many Olympians, I struggle to pay the bills. And my situation is not unique. The Canadian Athletes Now Fund, or CAN Fund, provides financial........

© Macleans