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SPECIAL SECTION/CANADA'S TEAM/LUGE | FEBRUARY 2, 1998 VOL. 151 NO. 4 |
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Hands Off Clay Ives first honed his skills on a backyard track 800 meters long By MARGARET FELDSTEIN
He learned to luge in his backyard. Ives, now 25, grew up on a 21-hectare farm just outside Bancroft, Ont., a former mining town 196 km northeast of Toronto. His father Paul came up with the idea of building the luge run 10 years ago, after using a toboggan to bring firewood down a hill to the family home. "It seemed a logical place to put it," says Paul Ives, whom some might consider the Walter Gretzky of the sliding set. "A lot of Canadian fathers spend time making hockey rinks for their kids," he explains. "I do the same thing, but in my case the rink is three meters wide and about 800 meters long." A few things about Clay's backyard luge track, or Naturbahn, differ from the Nagano track, known as the Spiral. For one thing, the grade. For another, the relative danger. The backyard luge sled had a rope handle for steering, and young Clay was able to use an extended arm for balance in negotiating turns on the gentle slope. On Nagano's Kuntsbahn, the state-of-the-art track where Ives and his teammate Tyler Seitz will be competing, sticking out an arm would be a good way to lose it. Ives had his first encounter with the big-league track at Lake Placid in 1987, where he had trekked for a Can-Am race. A year later, he made the Canadian junior team and won second place in the national junior championships. Ten years later, Ives is a veteran of the World Cup circuit and has even secured a few corporate sponsors. He has regularly finished in the Top 10 in this season's events. As for Nagano, "I want a Top 10 performance," he says firmly. "If I'm consistent over four runs with good starts, I'll be there." At the end of last year's season, Ives placed ninth--his first Top 10 World Cup finish--on the Spiral, and knows the track. "There are two sections that go uphill," he explains. "That's never been seen anywhere in the world before. If you make a mistake before entering those curves, you're dead." Ives has bigger plans for his future: "I'm looking at 2002 as my medal Games. Gold would be perfect." Ives admits he has always been a bit of a daredevil (no kidding!), and the luge track provides him with an outlet. Speeding down alleys of frozen ice doesn't seem to give him any cause for hesitation. "Luge has been relatively injury free for me," he says calmly. "I had a concussion once, but in luge we just call it a sore head." And it still beats hauling firewood. --Reported by Terry Walker /Toronto |
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uge, a sport in which sleds with no obvious steering mechanisms
barrel down tracks at speeds of up to 150 km/h, is one of the
more unconventional Olympic events. Good thing that Canada's top
luger, Clay Ives, is a bit unconventional himself.