Luger Had to Go for Green Before Chasing Gold

When things were going bad for either, Canadian luger Clay Ives used to remind American rival Chris Thorpe that he had a U.S. passport.

“We’d laugh about it, but I said it enough that he knew it was true,” Ives said recently.

Still, thoughts of turning traitor do not come easily for anybody, especially athletes who are surrounded daily by nationalistic fervor, almost as if it is a part of their mission. But for Ives, after six years of struggling to many non-medal finishes for Canada in both singles and doubles luge, the Benedict Arnold move seemed more and more justified.

In the end, it was all about the money, and Ives doesn’t apologize for that.

“I asked the Canadian federation for help,” he said. “I called and said I needed help, waited a couple of days and when I didn’t even get a call back, I packed and left.”

That was three years ago, when Ives said he was trying to train full time and live on the $8,000 a year the Canadians were allotting him. He said it cost him almost that much to leave, invoke his American citizenship via his mother’s birthplace in Gila Bend, Ariz., and join the U.S. luge program.

Then, his casual conversations with Thorpe paid dividends. Thorpe’s longtime partner, Gordy Sheer, with whom Thorpe had won a silver medal in luge doubles in Nagano, decided to retire. Thorpe needed a new partner for his last shot at Olympic gold, and his Canadian friend Ives was now an American luger. So, two years ago, the match was made.

Now, the two “old fogies,” as Ives, 29, calls his partnership with Thorpe, 32, will have a last go at it.

Ives said he, too, will retire after the Salt Lake City Games. And that last go has a solid chance of success when the competition is held Friday at Utah Olympic Park. In late January, the old fogies won a silver medal in World Cup competition in Germany, meaning that they will be positioned well in the starting field in the Olympics, running with group “A” seeds.

“That was huge for us,” Thorpe said.

Huge for Ives is just being where he is, considering where he came from.

He grew up in tiny Bancroft, Ontario. He is one of four sons of Paul and Linda Ives, and earlier in his youth, his father realized that the cost of having four sons playing youth hockey in Canada had to be dealt with.

“All four of us were in different leagues,” Ives said, “and when you added up all the skates and sticks and jerseys and carpooling, it was just too expensive.”

So Paul Ives did what any hockey father might do in that situation: He built a sled run.

Clay Ives said the run was not exactly luge or bobsled. It was, and is today, 900 meters of ice, with no corners, no banks and cut through the wooded area on the Ives’ property. Taking a ride on this course means you are participating in the sport of Naturbahn, or natural luge. To this day, the Ives family rents out the track for groups of fun-seekers and even the Canadian military. The family also has a bed and breakfast there.

In that setting, James Clay Ives learned to slide rather than skate and cross-check, and by the time he was 17, he was ready to take on the luge world. With $100 in his pocket, he left home and went to Calgary to join the Canadian team.

“I was never so scared in my life,” he said.

Over his nine years on the Canadian team, competing in both singles and doubles, the $100 grew only slightly, prompting his eventual departure. To this day, he has both regret and anger.

“Of course it was hard to leave,” Ives said. “I’m Canadian. But let me put it this way. If another newspaper offered you $20,000 more to work for them, your loyalty would end pretty fast.

“Let me give you an example. When I was competing in Canada, I drove a 1966 Ford Falcon. Here, I have a ’98 Dodge truck. Here, I don’t worry about eating. There, I once had to go to a food bank to eat.”

Tim Farstad, the team leader of the Canadian luge program and the executive director of Canada Luge, did not dispute Ives’ claims of financial hardship, nor did he indicate any sort of animosity toward Ives by the Canadian luge program.

“It’s just a fact that the American sports system in general can get much better money for the athletes,” Farstad said. “Ives had an opportunity to go, and there are no hard feelings.”

Farstad said that since Ives left in ‘98, the Canadian situation has improved greatly, almost doubling its monthly allotments to luge team members. Farstad added that the Canadian team is stronger now, and younger, so much so that Ives might not have even made the team north of the border.

Ives said he still feels and thinks like an amateur, even though the rules allow him the estimated $20,000 a year he gets from the U.S. Luge Federation. He also said he feels that he and Thorpe have a chance to win a gold medal, and that would make all he has been through worth it.

“When I was 15, a TV film crew came out to do a story at our track at home,” Ives said. “They interviewed me and I told them that, someday, I’d like to go to the Olympics.”

This will be his third trip.

“I’m sorry if some Canadians are angry with me,” he said, “but I couldn’t be happier.”