When I concluded my interview with U.S. luge Olympian Chris Mazdzer, I turned to a co-worker and said, “He’s not right.” A response came in the way of a shrug and, “Well, he’s a luger.”
I met Mazdzer through college. OK, that’s a little misleading. I was interested in athletes and education. Specifically, I am interested in the idea that the most elite athletes in the world want something bigger and better than gold. They want higher education. Because DeVry University partnered with the U.S. Olympic Committee to offer academic scholarships and an education opportunity fairly rare to our U.S. athletes, I tapped into some pretty extraordinary stories through the USOC and learned a few things along the way. That is how I met Mazdzer.
We chatted while he strolled through the Olympic village in Sochi. I was sitting at my desk in Texas. Our call was delayed because he did “facetime” with two different classrooms in the United States, answering questions about what it is like to be in Sochi, Russia, how it feels to be an Olympian, and all the other kinds of questions asked by 10- and 13-year-old groups.
Mazdzer was just about that age when he traveled to Europe for the first time. He was on the U.S. Luge Junior Development team. “I was 13 when I was asked to travel with Junior Nationals,” he said. “I was the youngest by two years.” Though he had been sliding since he was 8 years old, this was “a serious jump” for his family. Suddenly, the sport of luge went from something fun and exciting to Mazdzer being a serious Olympic prospect. “I have so much respect for my family allowing me to go to Europe when I was so young. It was such a great opportunity for me and shaped me as a person.”
Mazdzer had grown up in a town in upstate New York with apple orchards and vast hills perfect for sledding. He also lived just an hour’s drive from Lake Placid, one of only two places in the United States with a bobsled and luge track. “That,” he said with excitement even now, “was the ultimate hill!” A local program with the U.S. bobsled and luge federations was enacted to find gifted young athletes but whatever their strategies were, Mazdzer had very different ideas. “The line for the bobsled was so long but if I did the luge run, I could get in about seven runs a night.” And thus, a luger was born.
In 2008, after picking up his fifth award for the U.S. Luge Association’s Male Athlete of the Year, Mazdzer also made the U.S. Luge National team. In 2010, he made his Olympic debut in Vancouver and then was named U.S. Luge’s Male Athlete of the Year in 2012. At the Sochi games, Mazdzer turned in an impressive performance, placing 10th and 13th respectively, in a highly competitive field of seasoned veterans. So competitive, in fact, U.S. women’s luge Erin Hamlin won a bronze in the women’s singles luge on Feb. 11, becoming the first American ever to win a singles luge medal. Unlike the sport of bobsled, where a strong but relatively green athlete can push and jump in as a brakeman, luge is a solo sport that requires over a decade of training just to finesse how to properly steer. And this is exactly what Mazdzer has been doing for the last decade of his life, missing family functions and holidays.
“You have to make a lot of sacrifices,” he said, noting that he’s only attending one family Thanksgiving dinner since his career as a luger began. “It’s hard because we’re always traveling from September to March [the luge season]. The way I look at my life is, I’ve failed a lot of times, but each failure helped me to realize what I wanted to do.
So, what constitutes as a failure for Mazdzer? On the eve of boarding a plane to Sochi, Russia for his second Olympic Games, he took his midterm. Mazdzer is earning his degree in Business Administration, “and I have a course project this upcoming week but I’ve been a little slacking these past six days.”
To read the full interview conducted by Alexandra Allred, please click here.
