Track

The road on which you ride downhill on a street luge, is a normal road, mostly approx. 2 cars wide, which gives you a couple of luge widths room to swerve/avoid any obstacles. Races and freerides are done on closed roads, but training is often done on open roads, with live traffic.

Freeride on closed road

The track for ice luge is approx. 1.20 meters wide, where the sled takes up 50 cm, so there’s not a lot of room. but here are no obstacles, it’s just you and no one else in the track.

Braking

In street luge we brake if there is a situation (oncoming traffic, not making a corner/curve or something). You can then raise your upper body, put your feet firmly on the street and brake that way (more explained in safety gear point on page 3).

In ice luge there is no braking, except when you cross the finish line. The rest it’s just going flat out and race down the track. Since there are no other riders in the track it’s just you, so you won’t have anyone else who can ride in your way or something.

You brake by lifting the front of the sled which makes the back of the steels cut into the ice, which slows you down. Some tracks go up again after the finish which makes you slow down as well, so braking isn’t always necessary there.

Training

Learning how to ride a street luge is something you can do with your friends on a quiet road or on a freeride on a closed road. Friends can give you pointers or tips on how to do this.

On the ice you can’t really learn as much from friends like with street, since friends can’t follow you down the entire track. Once you push of, you’re gone and less than a minute later you’re about 1000 meters down the hill. You have two or three coaches along the track and as soon as you come down you contact them by radio and they then give you pointers. After the training you all get together and watch the videos they shot of you blasting down the track to see what you can improve.