USA Luge announces national team for the new season

Lake Placid (USA Luge/FIL) All eight lugers on the U.S. Olympic team for Beijing 2022 have been named by USA Luge to the national team for the upcoming World Cup season. The team includes 16 athletes. The Olympians are joined by several medal-winning rookies and experienced lugers.

Chris Mazdzer from Salt Lake City, Utah, has decided to continue his career. He has a 2018 Olympic silver medal and four Olympic appearances for the USA to show for it. In Beijing, he finished eighth in the men's individual and seventh in the team relay. Mazdzer, however, will not compete in all EBERSPÄCHER World Cups in the winter of 2022/2023 but will compete as a member of the B-Team at the North American World Cups in Whistler and Park City this December.  

Six athletes make up the A team, including singles skiers Tucker West and Summer Britcher, both three-time Olympians. West, from Ridgefield, Connecticut, won a silver and a bronze medal in the relay at last year's EBERSPÄCHER World Cup. Britcher, of Glen Rock, Pennsylvania, suffered a broken finger just before the Winter Olympics that affected her launch technique and speed. She earned a bronze medal in a World Cup relay. Britcher has five World Cup victories in her career, the most in US singles luge history.

Two women's double doubles complete the A team. World Cup bronze medallists Chevonne Forgan (Chelmsford, Mass.) and Sophie Kirkby (Ray Brook, N.Y.) are joined by Maya Chan (Chicago) and Reannyn Weiler (Whitesboro, N.Y.). The latter doubles team finished third in the overall women's World Cup standings last season, their first year in this new discipline. Forgan/Kirkby also stood on the World Cup podium twice, while Chan/Weiler earned three World Cup bronze medals and a fourth-place finish at the World Championships. The latter duo was also named to the junior A national team.
 
The B national team consists of Ashley Farquharson, Emily Sweeney, Chris Mazdzer, Jonny Gustafson and doubles Zack DiGregorio and Sean Hollander.
 
Farquharson, from Park City, Utah, finished 12th in the 2022 Olympic individual race and seventh in the team relay in her Olympic debut. She also won the first World Cup medal of her career, silver in the team relay last November on the Olympic track in China.

Sweeney, from Lake Placid, struggled to qualify for the Olympics last year. As a member of the Army's World Class Athlete Programme, she was not allowed to compete in Russia, where two Olympic qualifying events were held as part of the EBERSPÄCHER World Cup. Sweeney met the criteria for the Games with a fifth-place finish in her next start.
 

Gustafson, of Massena, N.Y., finished 19th in his first Olympic competition in Beijing, placing in the top 15 in three World Cup events, competing on borrowed equipment early in the season due to a delay in transportation from Beijing to resume the World Cup tour.
 
DiGregorio, of Medway, Massachusetts, and Hollander, of Lake Placid, made up the only American doubles team at the 2022 Olympics. The surprise qualifiers, who seized their chance when the Mazdzer/Jayson Terdiman duo fell, gained vital experience in the months leading up to and during Beijing. On Terdiman's borrowed sled, DiGregorio/Hollander finished 11th in the doubles in Beijing and seventh in the team relay.
 
Brittney Arndt from Park City in the US state of Utah was named to the C team after a 12th-place finish in the 2022 EBERSPÄCHER World Cup, which was her best performance of the season. The doubles team of Dana Kellogg of Chesterfield, Massachusetts, and Duncan Segger of Lake Placid is in the graduating junior category. Kellogg had shoulder surgery at the end of the season and is now undergoing rehabilitation.
 
The athletes are supported by a mix of old and new staff. Coaches Lubomir Mick and Kaspars Dumpis, Olympians for Slovakia and Latvia respectively, will coach the team in the 2022/23 season. Mick has been the national coach at USA Luge for the past nine years, while Dumpis has been an assistant coach with the junior national team for the past three years. Pat Anderson will continue as head coach of the junior national team after his team won 17 medals in youth and junior competitions last season.

Martin Hillebrand is the new starting coach of the USA Luge National Team. Hillebrand has served as the starting coach for the German, Russian, Austrian and Italian teams and has won countless Olympic, World Championship and World Cup medals over four decades.  

Bengt Walden, who coached the national team since 2016, is taking a year's sabbatical. 

Anderson will be assisted by newly hired Arturs Darznieks, who will serve as assistant coach of the junior national team. Darznieks is a 2018 and 2022 Olympian, having competed for Latvia. Aidan Kelly, a 2014 Olympian, will remain in charge of the C and D juniors, while recently retired two-time Olympian Jayson Terdiman will split his time between all three junior teams.
Caroline Kannel will travel with the national team as coach, while Tori Lam will do the same for the junior national team. 
 
The national team is expected to take to the ice for a preparatory training course in Europe in early October. The World Cup season begins on 3 and 4 December in Innsbruck, Austria, and will be held over a total of nine weekends in seven countries and on two continents. Currently, most of the US team is training at home in Lake Placid at the Luge Ice Start Facility and Olympic/Paralympic Training Centre.