Emily Fischnaller, a Maine native who now lives in Italy, completed the best Olympic performance of her career Tuesday in luge.
Fischnaller missed the podium but finished in 12th place. Her teammate, Ashley Farquharson, won bronze, so Team USA will take home its first medal in women’s singles since 2014.
“She was going for it,” an NBC announcer said as Fischnaller waved to the crowd at the end of her run.
Julia Taubitz of Germany won gold with a four-run total time of 3 minutes, 30.625 seconds, and Latvian Elina Bota earned silver in 3:31.543. Farquharson clocked in with a total of 3:31.582.
The athletes took four runs on the track over two days, and the three fastest total times made the podium. At the end of the first day, Fischnaller was in eighth place out of 25 competitors. In a sport where milliseconds make all the difference, she was in medal contention and less than a second off the leader.
On Tuesday, Fischnaller had the second-fastest time in the third run of the competition and jumped into fifth place. She struggled in her fourth and final run, however, hitting the side of the track more than once. Her total time was 3:33.035.
“That was shades of Pyeongchang when she crashed and was severely injured, but she kept it on the sled,” the announcer said.
Fischnaller, formerly Sweeney, also competed in the 2018 and 2022 Games. In 2018, she suffered a horrific crash in South Korea: She broke her neck and fought hard to return. She finished 26th in Beijing in 2022.
“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 were Summer Britcher and Farquharson; it’s the second straight Olympics that the trio represented Team USA. Britcher finished 14th.
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 past weekend in the men’s singles luge.
At the end of her run, Fischnaller sat up on her sled and shrugged — but stayed smiling.
