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e-mail: snoble@mtroyal.ca
Fred Cheney
Media Relations Officer
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Just the fact Regan Lauscher is at the Vancouver Olympics is incredible. After what she has gone through to get there, a strong result would make her a full-blown hero.
Lauscher has raced luge at the past two Winter Olympics.
She’s been all over the world launching her body down tracks of solid ice at speeds of 120, 130 and nearly 140 km/h with little more protection than a helmet.
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Journalism grad (2005), Regan Lauscher is the epitome of determination. Something she hopes pays off in Vancouver. |
Making up for lost time
All told, the graduate of Mount Royal’s Journalism stream (2005) lost a year and a half of preparation and competition leading up to the Vancouver Games.
"These last four years I’ve felt the most challenged I’ve ever felt in my career,” Lauscher admits candidly.
Most painful challenge was mental
When the headaches from her concussion disappeared, and she had completed the gruelling rehabilitation of her shoulders, Lauscher faced the most painful challenge of all — the mental battle every elite athlete faces after recovering from severe injury.'
In Oct. 2009 she sat in the icehouse at the track in Whistler, BC, and pulled on her suit. It was the first time in over a year and the first step in her journey back to the Olympics. As she bent over and tied up her boots, Lauscher inhaled deeply trying to fend off a storm of self-doubt and nerves.
“It came down to building trust back up,” says Lauscher.
“Trusting myself to get back on the sled again; trusting the sport and feeling safe and confident — because if those things aren’t there, luge is hardly the sport you should do. And the surgeries were just one more thing to deal with, especially leading into the Games I’d hoped would be the pinnacle of my career.”
As she climbed to the starting gate and eyed the track snaking down the side of the mountain, Lauscher shook off all those doubts and sat down on her sled. Nobody expected anything from her.
Her only duty was to regain a feel for the sport she’d dedicated the last 16 years of her life to.
“In a way it was like when I first started luging and all I thought about was, ‘Are my feet up, are my toes pointed?’ — very basic stuff. I was just going to be sliding so it was peaceful. I had nothing to prove.”
| Brothers Canada's best shot in luge
Brothers Mike and Chris Moffatt both studied here in the early 2000's.
After "sledding" with the national luge team during high school, brothers Mike and Chris Moffatt decided to take time off to focus on their studies. Upon arrival at Mount Royal, Mike studied Criminal Justice, Chris, Physical Education. While they have decided to focus their lives on their athletic careers both hope to finish their Mount Royal education at some point. Back in the game In 2005 the brothers gave in to the itch compelling them to return to luge racing and blew everyone away when they recorded three top-eight finishes in their first three races back. After a long hiatus, such a successful return is rare. The pair went on to finish ninth at the 2006 Winter Games in Torino. They have been building a name for themselves ever since. As part of the Canadian luge relay team the pair helped Canada to a bronze medal podium finish at a race in Oberhoff, Germany in early 2010. Canada has never won a luge medal at the Winter Games, but with the Moffatts on the track, anything's possible. The Moffatts take to the track for their first heat, Feb. 17, 4 p.m. |
When the sled reached the bottom, Lauscher took a second before getting up and absorbed the moment. It was like travelling back in time to when she first started luging and she just luged for the pure enjoyment of it.
Lauscher says that was precisely the experience she needed to kick off her comeback.
Downhill from there — not in a good way
As the season progressed, Lauscher found it more difficult than she’d hoped to regain the form that saw her finish 10th at the 2006 Winter Games in Torino.
There would be one good race and one terrible race. Instead of finishing hundreds of a second off podiums she was finding herself closer to a minute off the pace.
All were distressing points to contend with during an Olympic year, and compounded by the fact the Games were going to be on home soil.
Lauscher and her coaches agreed to change their strategy and began focusing on consistency rather than speed.
It finally began to click
During the last month of racing before departing for BC, things finally began to click. Lauscher’s speed still wasn’t top-end, but she had linked up four solid races, capping off her pre-Olympic run with an encouraging ninth-place finish at a race in Oberhoff, Germany.
And that was exactly what she was aiming for, since in Vancouver a luger will have four races over a two-day period in which to produce their best time. The best time in the four races will win, but obviously a luger’s odds of success increase with the more top-end times they can put together.
One wrong move, however, will put Lauscher on the outside looking in. The ability to tie four consistently strong runs together is the key to success in Vancouver, which is why her last four positive results have renewed her confidence heading into the Games.
Olympic challenge bigger than the track
“All the fanfare and buzz around the Olympics sometimes seems like a little too much,” says Lauscher.“Sometimes you just want to go and you want to race and you want your four minutes on the ice. Sometimes you wish you could just go there, put your sled on the ice and go."
If Lauscher can find that headspace in Vancouver and tap into the peace she found during her first run back after physical rehabilitation, her story is sure to become legend.
Lauscher will get her first taste of Vancouver competition Feb. 15, 4 p.m.
— Steven Noble, Feb. 11, 2010
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