Luge is one of the fastest sliding sports in the Winter Olympics, with athletes reaching speeds of nearly 90 mph. For 21-year-old Sophia Gordon, the sport has shaped her path as a student and an athlete.
Gordon attended the 2026 Winter Games as an alternate for Team USA Luge. The 2026 Games marked the first time women’s doubles luge was classified as an official Olympic event, though luge has been part of the Games since 1964.
Originally from Sussex, Wisconsin, Gordon trains in Lake Placid, New York, while pursuing an online degree through the University of Florida.
Prior to the Winter Games, WUFT’s Haley Black spoke with Gordon about how she became involved in the sport, how she manages the demands of training and school and her role as an Olympic alternate.
This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.
Black: How would you explain luge to someone who has never seen it before?
Gordon: I would explain luge as an ice water slide, but you have a lot more control than you would on a water slide.
Black: How did you first hear about luge and decide this was something you wanted to try?
Gordon: I originally had no idea what luge was until I was watching the 2014 Winter Olympics. It was just something my parents threw on the TV for fun, and my brother and I were captivated by the sport.
We loved roller coasters and water slides, so this sport seems exactly that. And we went online to look up if you could get involved in the sport, and they had a USA Luge slider search in Chicago, and the slider search pretty much goes around the country, it is run by USA Luge. And the kids try the sport on real sleds on concrete hills, so that was kind of my first introduction to the sport, but we did that slider search as more like a fun, just want to try it. We did not realize that it would lead to the USA Luge development team, the junior team to the national team.
Black: And having to travel to Lake Placid to train, what was that like, being away from family for weeks on end?
Gordon: We kind of eased into traveling. On the junior development team, it would be a week here and there throughout the winter. And that was super fun, it was like a little vacation from my parents and from school, like what kid wouldn't want to skip school for a week to go do sports?
And then, as it got more serious, it started being like two weeks and three weeks throughout the winter, and then I made the junior national team my freshman year of high school, and it became from October through Christmas and then the new year to the end of March. And it was hard to navigate, and I definitely feel like I missed out on some of the traditional high school experiences, but I knew that what I was doing was so unique and it was going to lead to something bigger, and it honestly allowed me to grow up a lot quicker and give me real-life experiences before a lot of my peers, and so I feel like it really just prepared me for real life.
Black: And what would you say has been your biggest challenge, and also what are you most proud of in your career up to this point?
Gordon: My biggest challenge that I have faced so far was definitely once I graduated high school. I was really stuck between whether I wanted a traditional college experience or if I wanted to continue pursuing luge, and I was concerned that if I didn't choose a traditional college experience, I wasn't going to be able to get an education that was just as good as a degree from a typical four-year university.
But then, through the University of Florida, I found that I can achieve that same level of education online, and it has been very rewarding. And my biggest accomplishment so far in my career, I would say taking on women's doubles. Women’s doubles is a brand new field; this will be the first time it debuts in the Olympics, and it has been exciting and rewarding to push the boundaries of being a woman in sport because it was something that was not offered to us when I first started this sport. My partner and I actually had our best finish this year, which was fifth place at our Lake Placid track, which is our home track.
Black: What does a typical week look like for you during the competitive season, having to balance school and the sport as well?
Gordon: The typical week for me, we have training sessions every day, either one or two, and that takes up a good majority of the day. So sessions are typically three hours and so when you have two of them a day, a morning session and an afternoon session, it can be challenging to find time to do school, so I'm either waking up early in the morning to tackle it before the session, bringing it to meals to work on or staying up late to get my schoolwork done. But it's been very helpful to have the University of Florida be flexible with working with my schedule, and they allow me to take a half load of courses during my competitive season and then in the summer, I’m really able to ramp up the credit hours that I'm accumulating.
Black: You're traveling with Team USA as an alternate. What does that mean to you?
Gordon: Means a lot. Women's doubles were only allowed 12 allocation spots from the International Olympic Committee, and knowing that there are so many teams that have multiple sleds, not all of us were able to go. It's honestly still an honor to be an Olympic alternate because all the other countries that have Olympic alternates were right there cheering a team on. I'm excited for the experience to be able to cheer on my teammates, and I am very excited to kind of get like a practice rundown of how the Olympic Games work without having to compete, using it as a trial run for the 2030 and 2034 Games.
Black: What advice would you give to students who think they have to choose between school and their athletic dreams?
Gordon: The biggest advice I would give is to make sure to use sports and school as outlets for one another. That's been something that's been very helpful for me, and being able to use each one to take a break from the other and mentally decompress. There are so many interesting things that you're gonna learn in your classes and use that knowledge and apply it to your sport, apply it to your life.
Black: If you could talk to your younger self watching the Olympics, what would you say to her?
Gordon: I would tell her anything is possible because she would have never thought that someday she would be on the national team as an Olympic alternate doing the world’s most fun sport. Anything is possible.