PYEONGCHANG, South Korea — Imagine flying down a winding track of solid ice while wearing next to nothing. At over a hundred miles an hour. There are metal blades involved, too. And in some cases, you can’t see the track you’re barreling down.
It’s safe to say that it takes a special kind of person to be a luger.
Not only do Andrew Sherk and Jayson Terdiman fit the bill, but they also do it at the most advanced level at tracks across the world. But before they were doubles members on separate sleds representing Team USA at the 2018 Winter Olympics, they sought out thrills at home in eastern Pennsylvania — Sherk in Fort Washington, and Terdiman in Berwick.
“The two of them have always been the ‘get-the-skateboards-going’ guys and [did] gymnastics, [flipped] on the trampoline,” Kathryn Terdiman, Jayson’s mother, recalled. “Where a lot of kids would just spend their time video gaming, Jayson and Andrew were not those two kids.”
“I didn’t know this,” Ellen Sherk, Andrew’s mother, said to Kathryn. “I didn’t know it was a Jayson thing that instigated the fun stuff!”