When your sport’s high-action moment involves blindly sliding down a sheet of ice at speeds of 90 miles per hour, you almost expect to break a bone or two. But according to U.S. Olympic athlete and Lake Placid, New York, local Erin Hamlin, who became the first member of Team USA to win a medal in the individual luge (she nabbed a bronze in the women’s singles event in Sochi this winter), her emergency-room tally is far lower than one might expect. Her most painful injury? Breaking a nail.
“Off the top of my head, the most painful thing I can think of is when my fingernail got ripped off in one piece,” she groans. “It was honestly the worst thing ever. People laugh when I say that, like, ‘Oh, you broke a nail?’ But it was pretty brutal.” On top of her cringe-worthy injury, there are the routine bumps, bruises, and hairline stress fractures that come with the territory—but it’s nothing the tough-as-nails (no pun intended) athlete can’t handle.
Erin Hamlin takes a preliminary run in the Tiscover Challenge Cup in Canada. Photo by Jamie Squire courtesy TeamUSA.org
“[The luge] is very physical, but at the same time it’s more of a mental sport because we have to get over the thought of going down a track at 90 miles an hour without looking,” the three-time Olympian explains of a sport that looks—to the innocent bystander—about as terrifying as they come in the amateur arena. It begins with an explosive start, when a luger employs all of her muscle power to accelerate her sled from the starting line before she hops on, lowers her head flat to reduce wind drag, and calls on hours of practice, tiny muscle movements, precise steering, and a whole lot of visualization to “minimize the damage and stop losing time.”
“Every track has an ideal line, basically the fastest way from point A to point B, and we try to stay within an inch of that,” Hamlin, who is also a five-time consecutive national champion, explains. “To get within an inch of that ideal line, there are certain spots we have to get to on that track. We know exactly what we want to be doing at each curve, so I’ll go through that in my mind. We do a lot of visualization so that as we’re going down it’s coming naturally and we can go off feeling instead of having to see everything.”
Erin Hamlin attends the U.S. Olympic Committee Luge Singles Press Conference in Vancouver, British Columbia. Photo by Richard Heathcote courtesy TeamUSA.org
Mental agility aside, there’s a reason Hamlin practically lives at the Lake Placid U.S. Olympic Training Center year-round: She needs power, and lots of it. Since luge athletes only “slide” for half the year, a lot of their time is focused on strength training. “We’re in the gym at least three to four times a week all summer; we do a lot of Olympic lifting,” Hamlin says of her training plan. “I love yoga for my mind and body, and the flexibility and stability of it is really helpful.”
In addition, Hamlin does extra agility and coordination training to help her prep for quick reactions during high-speed slides. “Our start is such a unique thing,” she adds. “There’s not really another sport or exercise that mimics it, so we’ve had to develop a lot of sport-specific exercises around it.” Even when she’s not in the gym, her family keeps her active with kickball leagues, lake paddling, horseback riding, and Tough Mudder races (in fact, she’s competing in one next week).
If her training plan sounds brutal, there are perks to match. “I kind of hit the jackpot of sports!” Hamlin laughs. “I’m outweighed by 20 pounds by some of the girls I race against.” Translation? Overeating is totally allowed—but Hamlin doesn’t sit around eating donuts all day. Her diet is based around lean proteins and healthy snacking: “I snack a lot but I keep it healthy,” she says. “My go-to are Kind Bars; they are the greatest things ever and I love that I know what’s in them. I like that I can feel OK about having ice cream every once in a while.”
And lucky for Hamlin, a frosty sundae is usually on the house in her hometown, where in 2009 a local creamery dubbed one of their signature creations the World Champion Erin Hamlin Sundae. “My little brother worked there at the time and he called me with this emergency phone call one night,” she remembers. “I was nervous because he never leaves voicemails … I called him back and he was like, ‘If you could have anything on an ice cream sundae, what would you have on it?’ They were the quickest on the draw after the Olympics and it’s now the Olympic Bronze Medalist Erin Hamlin Sundae. I was like, ‘Damn, I didn’t even change my Twitter info yet and you have the menu ready!”
Other than that Twitter info (which, yes, has been updated to reflect Hamlin’s historic Olympic win), not much has changed for the humble bronze medalist, who is right back at her training plan prepping for the competitive circuit that will take up her time until the next Winter Games arrive. And that prized medal? “It’s at my parents’ house; it’s made the rounds quite a bit,” she laughs. “When I go to speak somewhere, I like to bring it around. People get really excited when I let them touch it. If it gets scratched, it’s love. It builds character. Actually, I think it’s lost in my glove box right now!”
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