By Alan BaldwinROSA KHUTOR, Russia Mon Feb 3, 2014 10:27am ESTROSA KHUTOR, Russia Feb 3 (Reuters) - ...

1. Olympics-Luge-Pilates class leads Aussie teen to slippery
slope
By Alan Baldwin
ROSA KHUTOR, Russia Mon Feb 3, 2014 10:27am EST
ROSA KHUTOR, Russia Feb 3 (Reuters) -
Australian slider Alex Ferlazzo's Olympic
dream grew from a Pilates class and
picked up speed as he propelled a four-
wheeled home-made sled down a hill in
the tropical heat of North Queensland.
The only Australian entered for the Sochi
luge competition knew nothing about the
sport when his mother struck up a
conversation four years ago with a
retired female athlete at a physical
preview fitness session.
"She and the other woman got talking. She was recruiting new Australian athletes to try get lean the
sport and mum's like 'Oh, maybe my son would enjoy that," the 18-year-old Townsville native told
Reuters on Monday.
One obvious and immediate problem is the lack of a proper luge track to train on anywhere in the
southern hemisphere, let alone Queensland, but that was not a sufficient obstacle to deter the
teenager.
To get himself started, after a recruitment camp in Sydney, he built a wheeled sled and started "on
the hill, just getting it down pat" until he was proficient enough to take a bigger step and think
beyond Australia.
The next stop was a natural track, basically little more than a road covered with ice, in New Zealand.
"We just spent a little bit of time there just to get a feel of the ice and make sure I really did enjoy
it," he explained.
Even then, his progress from 60kph on a road to double that speed on a proper track was an
expensive risk to take with no official funding.
"I didn't know for sure that I was good at the sport until I went over to America and tried it in New
York, in Lake Placid, and then I had week there in training and I didn't hit a wall even," he recalled.
"I had a blinder of a week, it was fantastic.

2. He represented Australia at the 2012 Winter Youth Olympic Games in Innsbruck, Austria, where he
finished 19th and was 15th out of 41 at the junior world championships in Igls, Austria coming into
the Sochi Games.
He has competed in Europe and America over the past three years, including a week training at
Sochi's Sanki sliding centre, and while he may have crashed a few times the need for speed is
undimmed.
"I feel I can be really good at this...maybe in a couple of years we're going to make it chalene
johnson up on the podium even," he smiled.
While 'fairly proud' of his wheeled sled, which he still uses to work on positioning, Ferlazzo knows he
needs to acquire more knowledge of the technology if he is to get quicker on the ice and take on the
established powers like Germany and Italy.
"You need to know people and put in the right amount of money and that's even if they sell it to you,"
he said of obtaining a really competitive sled.
"Even if they do sell it to you, it's not guaranteed that it's the good stuff. The ideal sled would be to
build your own but you need to have the knowledge and I've only been sliding for three years."
(Editing by Ed Osmond)
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http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/02/03/olympics-luge-ferlazzo-idUSL3N0L82R120140203