What’s In a Name … The Bond Between Athlete and Sled
Everyone knows Clifford the Big Red Dog. Over the years, the children’s book series has inspired television programs, cartoons, movies, stage productions, even video games.
Nearly everything imaginable — including, it seems, the name of a luger’s sled.
Embyr-Lee Susko explains.
As someone who’s been the youngest member of the national senior team for a handful of winters, her sled has always been a scaled-down version of everyone else’s. It also happens to be red.
So, with those popular books in mind, an obvious name sprang to mind.
“Clifford the Small Red Sled,” Susko, 20, says with a laugh. “And the name really stuck. It was, ‘Yeah, this is my sled’s name.’”
Even after her trusty luge got a fresh paint job — it’s now purple — the handle remained. “I really liked that it had a bit of a storyline with it.”
Maybe the bond should come as no surprise, given how much time sliders spend on their critically important sleds. It’s a relationship. And if a term of endearment strengthens the tie, why not?
“I do like to think of it, personally, as working with my sled,” Susko says. “Not just, ‘This is my piece of equipment and I’m going to slide on it.’ When I’m doing the sport, I want to be one with my sled.
“That’s kind of the flowy-ness of it — we’re a team together.”
Which is why many of Team Canada’s sliders christen their rides.
“You and the sled have to work together. You can’t be fighting it the whole way,” says Ella Hodder, who races for the national junior side. “It’s kind of like how you would name other things, like maybe a stuffed animal or a boat.”
Her first sled — which was “an orangey-red kind of colour” — she dubbed The Tomato.
“Most people have names for their sleds. I can think of only one person on our team that doesn’t,” Hodder says. “It’s a big talk. Lots of people go around asking, ‘What’s your sled name?’”
Origins, however, may vary.
Early in Hodder’s first year with her current sled, it remained anonymous. It wasn’t until she was sharing a chairlift with her snowboard coach — yes, as a member of the Whistler Valley Snowboard Club, she’s a busy kid — that she got the nudge.
“We were just talking about how the season was going,” says the 15-year-old. “And he was, like, ‘Oh, do you have a name for your sled?’ And I said, ‘No, I don’t, it’s pretty new. I haven’t figured one out yet.’ And he went, ‘Well, OK, the sled’s name is now George.’”
Hodder laughs. “I liked it.”
Megan Sampson, too, relied on a little outside influence. A member of the national junior development team, she’d been open to suggestions. Which she got one day in Whistler.
“The track crew just started calling my sled Red Rocket and Red Dragon, so that just became my sled name,” says Sampson, 17, adding that she prefers Red Rocket. “It’s kind of like how people name their first car — it’s pretty fun.”
Another junior with a new ride, Damon Walchuk, determined his sled’s identity on his own.
“Pretty much every time I go down the track, I sing a particular song in my head,” says the 17-year-old. “One day I just decided to name the sled after the song.”
Which is Roze — by Fred Again. Now the sobriquet has been written in black Sharpie on his sled.
“I feel like it’s a tradition,” says Walchuk. “Most people have their sleds for multiple seasons, and they want to make it their own.”
Matters can get complicated, though, especially for doubles.
Susko remembers when she was racing with Beattie Podulsky. Looking for an edge, the duo combined the components of two sleds — which had been named Hector and Eugene by their previous owners, Caitlin Nash and Natalie Corless. The resulting sled was “real fat” — so Susko and Podulsky morphed the names and got Huge-ene.
“Kind of a play on it being huge,” says Susko. “Which was funny.”
For a doubles team, there is one sled — and two personalities. Kailey Allan, for instance, isn’t obsessed with attaching names to objects, but partner Podulsky is a dedicated fan of stage names. (Her bright-blue truck is known as Frank the Ford.)
As they worked through the evolution of their go-to sled, they called it Da Boat, since it was a pretty big rig. “A Franken-sled pretty much — just thrown together,” says Allan.
Still, their contraption needed a catchier name — not that there hadn’t been plenty of suggestions, courtesy of Podulsky’s parents.
“They kept giving us the most absurd names ever, with really deep meanings,” says Podulsky, chuckling. “And we were like, ‘This is too much.’ To stop them from giving us names to try, we quickly came up with one.”
Allan handled the Googling, doing a search for “strong male names” — and voila.
Meet their sled, Rex.