Emily Fischnaller, a Maine native who now lives in Italy, got off to a smooth start Monday in the fastest sport in the Winter Olympics — the luge.
Fischnaller made her first two singles runs for Team USA in Cortina d’Ampezzo. Halfway through the competition, she sits in eighth place out of 25 competitors.
In her first run, she finished seventh in 52.892 seconds. She clocked in at 52.980 seconds in her second run. She hit speeds of more than 70 mph.
The athletes will compete twice more Tuesday, and the three fastest total times will make the podium. Fischnaller’s total time is 1:45.872. In a sport where milliseconds make all the difference, she is less than a second off the leader, Julia Taubitz of Germany.
“She’s managing well at the top,” an NBC announcer said as Fischnaller started her second run. “She really excels when she finds her rhythm.”
Fischnaller, formerly Sweeney, is chasing her first Olympic medal. She also competed in the 2018 and 2022 Games. In 2018, she suffered a horrific crash in Pyeongchang, South Korea: She broke her neck and fought hard to return.
“I broke my neck and back at the Olympics doing extreme sledding. Like, that’s not relatable to the average person,” Fischnaller told The Athletic. “… But I’m also a person who went through a traumatic experience who put herself back together to face a fear, and that’s really relatable.”
Her teammates in women’s singles are Summer Britcher and Ashley Farquharson; it’s the second straight Olympics that they are representing Team USA in the category.
At the end of the first day, Farquharson is in fifth place with a total time of 1:45.796, and Britcher is 12th at 1:46.614.
Fischnaller was born in Portland and lived in Falmouth until moving to Connecticut at age 10. She now lives in Italy, not far from the site of this year’s Winter Olympics. She is married to Dominik Fischnaller, who won a bronze medal this weekend in the men’s singles luge.
On Tuesday, she’ll have the chance to bring home her own medal.
“She’s not done yet,” one announcer said.
