Olympics Reporting: Pennsylvanians Andrew Sherk, Jayson Terdiman seek Olympic luge glory (The Philadelphia Inquirer)

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!”

Olympics Reporting: Family pushes Glen Rock's Summer Britcher in Olympic luge medal quest (The Philadelphia Inquirer)

PYEONGCHANG, South Korea — Long before she took on such German luge juggernauts as two-time Olympic gold medalist Natalie Geisenberger, Summer Britcher faced the daunting trio of Will Jr., Alex and Meredith Britcher.

From hopscotch to Monopoly — Carrie and Bill Britcher, their parents, said they still can’t find all of the pieces after a flipped board incident — the Britcher kids were consumed with competition. In 2007, the siblings took their business to a free USA Luge Challenge event, which is designed to expose children to the sport, at Ski Liberty in Fairfield, Pa. Summer Britcher, 11 at the time, refused to let her three older siblings beat her, this time down a snow-covered hill resembling a luge track.

“It was just an innocent sled ride,” Bill Britcher said.

Not quite.

Olympics Reporting: Olympian John Daly, competing in skeleton, is son of retired FDNY medic (am New York)

PYEONGCHANG, South Korea — Courage and resilience are in John Daly’s blood. After all, he’s the son of a retired FDNY medic.

Four years ago at the Winter Olympics in Sochi, American skeleton slider Daly glided across the finish line with his head in his hands. Coming into the fourth heat, the last one of the event, he was in third place. At the start of the final his runners popped out of the track’s grooves, slowing down his speed and dropping him to a 15th-place finish.

A devastated Daly retired from skeleton for three years. While on a date during his hiatus, Daly faced a question he didn’t know how to answer: “What are you passionate about?” That’s when he knew it was time to revive his career — and he did it in time to qualify for the Pyeongchang Olympics in a quest for redemption.

Olympics Reporting: Brooklyn alpine skier Besnik Sokoli soaks in Olympic experience (am New York)

PYEONGCHANG, South Korea — Besnik Sokoli didn’t let a lack of money, time to train or even the inability to qualify for the Winter Olympics keep him from coming to Pyeongchang.

The 36-year-old alpine skier and Kosovo War refugee who has lived in Brooklyn since 1999 still found a way to make it to the games — just not the way he initially hoped.

Sokoli, a building superintendent who trained using a ski machine in the basement of the DUMBO apartment building where he works, aspired to compete in men’s downhill for Kosovo, his native country. He started preparing for the Olympics only eight months ago, after not skiing since childhood, and his story of grit and determination went viral. Although he didn’t qualify for the team, the Kosovo Ski Federation invited him and his wife, Flutura, to South Korea as guests.

“I’m not feeling down,” Sokoli told amNewYork. “I’m not feeling blue at all that I didn’t get to walk in [at the opening ceremony] or race. I’m extremely motivated.”

Olympics Reporting: Caroline Park, Columbia med student, an Olympic hockey player for Korea (am New York)

PYEONGCHANG, South Korea — For Caroline Park, the Winter Olympics are part athletic competition, part real-world job training experience.

As a medical student at Columbia University, the 28-year-old Park has spent plenty of time around needles while she worked as a clinical research assistant at the Hospital for Special Surgery on the Upper East Side of Manhattan and completed clinical rotations for school.

Now, she’s on the receiving end of medical attention during her first Olympic experience in Pyeongchang. Before games and between periods, the Korean women’s ice hockey player received shots to numb the pain of a high-ankle sprain sustained during a pre-Olympics training camp.

“It’s funny because my trainer, every time I might get a little down or disappointed because of my injury, he’s always just like, ‘Well, this will be a great experience that you can relate with your patients later,’ ” said Park, an aspiring orthopedic surgeon.

Olympics Reporting: Amanda Kessel, U.S. women eye ice hockey redemption against Canada (am New York)

GANGNEUNG, SOUTH KOREA — When Amanda Kessel came back from her first Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia, she was forced to carry two burdens that would define the next four years: a silver medal and concussion symptoms.

Both were devastating. Both were motivational.

An iconic gold medal hockey game against Canada ended in anguish for the United States, losing in overtime. It wasn’t until Kessel returned to the University of Minnesota for her senior season that she started feeling concussion symptoms sustained after crashing into the boards headfirst during a pre-Olympics scrimmage. She had no choice but to sit out for the entire year.

Long past her lost year, Kessel, who most recently played for the National Women’s Hockey League Riveters franchise when it was based in Brooklyn, has worked to make a gold-plated comeback in Pyeongchang.