Olympic Spirit Burns Bright in Alberta Luger Scarlett Jochumsen
Sometimes the kid can be found on wheels, hurtling down an abandoned road in Calgary.
She has also been known to go to nearby Chestermere Lake, rent a paddle board and, foregoing paddles, use only her hands to propel herself against the current.
Occasionally, seated on her sled and wearing spiked gloves, she will power around one of Winsport’s rinks, typically the setting of hockey players and figure skaters.
When you’re an up-and-coming slider in a city without a luge track, you need to get creative.
Which is what Scarlett Jochumsen — and others sharing her predicament — are doing.
Part of the first wave of lugers who never had access to the luge track at Canada Olympic Park, which closed in 2019, the 14-year-old is managing to thrive.
Jochumsen recently laid claim to her third consecutive national championship at Whistler, B.C. — Youth B Women titles in 2024 and 2025 to go with her Youth C Women crown in 2023.
“I was happy with how I did. It was pretty good,” says Jochumsen, a Grade 9 student at Vincent Massey School. “It reassures me that all the work I put in really adds up to something at the end.”
Because for Jochumsen and her family, the dedication is substantial.
She does what she can in Calgary — bolstering starting skills with those unorthodox gatherings at a lake or on a rink, fine-tuning fundamentals with workouts at the Ice House at Winsport, squeezing the most out of dryland and wheel-sled sessions.
“I feel, even with not being able to slide every day, you can really progress,” says Jochumsen. “You have to really enjoy it. You definitely have to want to put the work in. You have to have the motivation and really want to do this.”
With the support of the Alberta Luge Association, she makes five trips to Whistler every winter, soaking up as much time on a legitimate track as possible.
“If you want to reach that next level, you need to get as much run volume as you can,” says her father, Chad. “We’re putting in up to 150 runs a year, while the B.C. kids are probably getting 350. It’s a hard thing to do, but you’ve got to be committed to the whole process, right?”
This, with only one luge facility in the country, is the challenge.
But Jochumsen stands as a shining example of what is possible.
“She’s showing great progression and the future is bright,” says Sam Edney, high-performance director of Luge Canada. “To me, this shows that Calgarians still have that Olympic spirit. The Olympic legacy is embedded in them — they just need to have ways to access sport and tap into it.”
As a little girl, Jochumsen had been devoted to gymnastics.
But, during the COVID-19 pandemic, she was unable to pursue her favourite sport. But her parents noticed, on Facebook, the details for the Discover Luge program. It sounded cool. So, in 2020, Jochumsen whipped down a snow track on the Canada Olympic Park ski hill.
“I don’t remember a whole lot. Just the difficulty,” she says. “Kids, at that age, like adrenaline-seeking sports, and it was kind of like tobogganing really fast on a different sled.”
Adds Dad: “She loved it and we kept coming back.”
Understandably for the youngster, however, it had been difficult to fully grasp what the sport looked like at the elite level — till Chad showed her racing on television.
“I’m like, ‘Oh my god, that’s really fast. How could that connect to snow sliding?’” says Jochumsen, chuckling. “At that age you still hadn’t put the pieces together about how fast you could actually be going.”
She would find out soon enough. Because the following winter, Jochumsen, then nine, journeyed for the first time to Whistler.
At the top of the track, she settled onto a proper sled. She remembers being thrilled that it was purple.
At the bottom, meanwhile, Chad waited anxiously. “That’s when the parent nerves come in.”
From his daughter’s introductory turn down the icy chute, there are two unforgettable takeaways. Her announced speed — 82 km-h — and the fact that she was wearing a big smile at the finish.
That was four years ago — and Jochumsen, literally a quick study, has since hit 118 km-h. Now she would dearly love to land a spot on the national junior team, improving to the point where the 2028 Winter Youth Olympics become reality.
“Right from the start there was a ton of excitement and eagerness from Scarlett and her entire family to embrace the sport,” Edney says. “I remember the look of excitement on her face after those first runs, even when it was on snow, where it’s basically glorified tobogganing. And now seeing that she’s leading the pack in our Youth category is super exciting.”
Enrolled at the National Sport School in Calgary next year, Jochumsen is proud of how far she’s come, especially considering the obvious obstacle.
“I didn’t really think that I would get to this level, for sure. I’m happy about what I’ve done.”