Born with a Passion to #JustSlide
Attitude matters. A luge lifer, Robert Fegg knows this to be true.
Hired to coach South Korea's program at the 2018 Olympic Games, Fegg arrived in PyeongChang in the spring of 2014. The national team had already been selected. Based on athletic potential, not sled experience, the lineup was filled with "complete newbies," he says.
In fact, one of the participants, only a few months earlier, had been inspired by luge events at the 2014 Olympics. He thought the sport was “cool.” In no time, that chap — despite having never gone down a track — was added to Team Korea. Wholeheartedly, the young man embraced the challenge, doing everything that was asked of him.
"Extremely committed," recalls Fegg. "He out-pushed everybody and went to the Olympics in 2018, then he went to the 2022 Olympics in Beijing." A pause. "That shows you what enthusiasm can do."
And that shows you what Fegg, current head coach of Team Canada, admires — intangible traits such as courage and determination. When scouring identification camps these days for potential sliders, Fegg keeps an open mind. Of course, he's trying to land kids who are tall, athletic, explosive, but he’s aware that it's not always about locking down the best physical specimens. Fegg mentions standouts such as Austria's Wolfgang Kindl, five-foot-five, and Canada's Arianne Jones, five-foot-four.
"So, nothing to do with what we would look for in the perfect luge athlete, body-attribute-wise," he says. "But they can be really good as long as they're committed and enthusiastic and crazy about it." As he tries to reinvigorate the national team's roster of up-and-comers — and as Luge Canada aims to raise the profile of the sport via its #JustSlide campaign — Fegg emphasizes the importance of will, which trumps nearly everything else in a slider's toolbox.
"I often tell my athletes, 'high-performance sport can be about torturing yourself from the first day to the last,'" he says. "It's not always fun, but if you want to end up on top, that's what it takes. You live it, you do whatever it takes to become the best you can be."
There are obstacles in Canada. Chief among them is access to only one artificial-ice complex — Whistler's, after Calgary's got decommissioned in 2019. But echoing the sentiment of Luge Canada's brass — executive director Tim Farstad, president Alex Gough, high-performance director Sam Edney — Fegg says participatory levels of sliding remain high in this country.
“So many people do tobogganing.” Which means the transition from recreational exercise to national-level pursuit isn't as bumpy as some might believe. Fegg insists the connection happens to be a terrific lever for recruitment. "This could be sold as, 'You love going down the hill, you love the speed, you love the thrill of tobogganing, so how about this? This is a whole new level. You're going to have so much fun — the adrenaline. It's awesome.' There are so many aspects that could be catchy to a young kid."
Fegg's introduction to an ice track, in his luge-mad homeland of Germany, arrived in Grade 3.
"I really sucked," he says, laughing. "I was so bad, you have no idea. But I stuck with it. Once I had a year or two under my belt, it actually turned out that I was not so bad."
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Helping matters? Fegg, from the beginning, had access to a proper track three times per week. In Germany, luge — from the schools to the clubs to the provinces to the national program — is established. Awareness is never a concern.
"There's a pyramid system and they have a really wide base," says Fegg. "There's a lot of people they can start selecting from."
In addition to facilities — four artificial-ice tracks — Germany boasts history and tradition, coaching and structure. So comparisons between the luging cultures of the two countries are difficult to make.
Fegg notes that there is one arrangement that would provide a spark for Canadians. A collaboration between North American tracks, so, in addition to Whistler, prospects could slide at venues in Lake Placid, N.Y., and Park City, Utah. That might help to broaden entry into the sport — a necessary component of Canada's luging reboot. Too, there is obvious value in grooming elite sliders. After all, headline-grabbing performances are ideal for putting luge — and home-grown stars — in the public eye.
"If we produce competitive athletes," says Fegg, "luge will be on everyone's radar more, people will talk about luge more."
Podium-chasing heroics, however, will have to wait. The sliders who earned Canada's only Olympic medals — Tristan Walker, Justin Snith, Gough, Edney — retired in recent years. With the 2025 FIL Luge World Championships set for Whistler, February 6-8,
Fegg refers to his current group as "a bit of an underdog." Yet he stays optimistic. Participation in Canada is well-established at the recreational level. Everything should flow from that.
"If we can develop a certain number of athletes who are reaching their fullest potential, we can move the needle," Fegg says. "If we come up with really creative ways of doing things, and spreading the word, then anything is possible. I really believe that."
Just like history has shown us.
