Regan Lauscher wasn't going to leave her luge career without a fight. Though the luge world has been rocked by the tragic death of Nodar Kumaritashvili, and though the women have been competing from the awkward juniors' start on the Whistler Sliding Centre track in the wake of the Georgian slider's shocking accident, the Canadian veteran was determined to leave her third and final Olympic Games with a performance that would make a statement and satisfy her standards.
"After yesterday, I wanted to turn it around. I wanted to step off the ice and be proud of my performance, and feel like that was Regan Lauscher. That's what I can do. That's my ability. And I feel like I did that," she said.
Lauscher, a native of Red Deer, Alta., sat 20th after her first two runs in the 2010 Olympic women's luge competition in Whistler on Monday night (Feb. 15). After that, facing the final two runs coming up on Tuesday (Feb. 16), she stared down the choice of giving up or fighting hard in the face of the challenges.
Lauscher said she could have walked away, or "I could be a competitor and I could fight. That's what we do, that defines who we are as athletes."
So she fought. Lauscher, Canada's only World Cup silver medallist in luge, barreled through her third run to post the 13th-fastest time of the run, and then had the 15th-fastest fourth and final run to leapfrog up the standings into 15th overall.
Before launching herself from the luge start handles for the last time, the thoughtful athlete made sure to soak up the moment.
"I remember seeing the track workers almost standing at attention. They work so hard for us, waiting for us to get on the ice I could hear the cheers, I could hear 'Go Regan,' I knew my parents were down here cheering, my teammates' families are all cheering for us," said Lauscher, who finished 10th and 12th at the 2006 and 2002 Games.
A seven-time Canadian champion, Lauscher has battled through a range of challenges to face down this one, including the double shoulder surgeries she endured in 2008 before returning for the second half of the 2008-'09 World Cup season.
Meanwhile, Austria's Nina Reithmayer broke into the dominance of German women on the Olympic luge podium that nation swept the women's luge medals in the last two Games by winning silver to split up the two Germans who stormed into the top three.
"I just had fun, I was relaxed, and the track was good. It was fun to slide here," Reithmayer said.
Germany's Tatjana Huefner, the 2006 Olympic bronze medallist and overall World Cup champion in the last three luge seasons, fulfilled the dream of becoming an Olympic champion with her commanding performance. Her teammate Natalie Geisenberger, the overall runner-up in the last two World Cup seasons and winner of the World Cup race in Whistler last year, claimed the bronze medal.
"I wanted to win here, and I'm very happy now that it's the dream come true," said Huefner, who took a half-hour sleep between her third and fourth runs and emerged to lay down a smooth final run.
The start position continued to be the story of this event, as the juniors' start forced many of these world-class racers to slosh from side to side as they navigated the entry into the track. The lugers must slide straight into a curve, trying to balance the need to get a fast start with the need not to run into a wall.
"It was tough, because you can't make speed or you lose it. It's 50-50 per cent that you make (the start curve) or not," Reithmayer said.
Calgary's Alex Gough, who was clearly frustrated after Monday's runs, likened it to "running into a brick wall."
Gough, the 22-year-old rising star, slid to Canada's best-ever finish at a luge world championships by finishing fourth last year, and she finished seventh and eighth overall in the last two World Cup seasons. Her usually fast-starting teammate Meaghan Simister is edging toward the top 10 in World Cup events.
But Gough finished 18th in this Games, after rebounding from Monday's frustration to improve four spots with her final two runs, and Simister wound up 25th.
Meanwhile, 2009 world champion Erin Hamlin of the U.S. finished 16th.
The International Luge Federation (FIL) made the decision to lower the race start heights with the women and doubles racing from the juniors' start, and the men beginning from the usual women's and doubles start for emotional and psychological reasons, officials said.
Canadian coach Wolfgang Staudinger said the North American sliders seemed to have a harder time with the juniors' start curve than the Europeans because no North American tracks other than Whistler's new track have a start like that, while all the European tracks have juniors' start corners shaped in that way, so their athletes put in some 1,000 runs on those starts by the time they are 15.
"We were 100 per cent competitive from our original start heights. When they slammed this decision on us, it was like a whole new situation," Staudinger said.
He said he was "very proud" of his athletes for giving their best shot and ending on a positive note.
The Canadian women held their heads high after the exercise in frustration. Simister, who crashed in her third run at the 2006 Olympics, said her times became irrelevant to her because she didn't give up on her sliding, and she was "so happy" to be competing in front of the enthusiastic home crowd.
"I feel wise beyond my years. I feel like this past week, I've grown so much and I've really learned who I am as a person and how I can deal with challenges. It's great," Simister said, adding that the luge community still feels "horrible" about the death of Kumaritashvili. "It's definitely not pushed aside."
