This is fun again. Sliding feet first down a slippery slope, feeling every ice chip as if it were a crater-sized pothole, now that's what luge is all about for Jeff Christie. Not the Olympics, not the pressure or the disappointment. That was last season.
This season is about "freedom, the freedom to try things," said a relaxed Christie. New training methods. Different sled runners. Different racing techniques. Anything and everything to reconnect with a sport that was all so serious even deadly in 2009-2010.
Heading into the third stop on this World Cup campaign - Saturday's men's event at Calgary's Canada Olympic Park - Christie has had a pair of disappointing 22nd-place finishes but he is satisfied with his times and enjoying the competition.
At 27, the Vancouver-born Calgary resident isn't sure he'll still be sliding come the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics. What he does know is that this season is about reconnecting with the joy of luging after a most strenuous run; one that included the death of Georgia's Nodar Kumaritashvili at the Whistler Sliding Centre and the decision to move the men's and women's starts to a lower point on the track.
That call was made to reduce the speed and risk of the Whistler track. It also threw the Canadian team's pre-Olympic preparations and expectations out the window. Christie believed - and still does - the starts should have remained at the top of the track because what happened with Kumaritashvili was purely accidental.
"It was a horrible, horrible circumstance. Being the home team, we had a lot of attention," Christie explained. "I think it was really important that the two reports - the one by FIL [the International Luge Federation]and the one by the B.C. coroner - both said the tragedy was an accident. A lot of people in the luge community felt that but it was important to read it. I know it was important for me."
Christie placed 14th in Whistler, the same showing he had managed four years earlier at the Turin Olympics. He had been hoping to crack the top six but found solace in how he and his teammates were treated by Canadian fans - with warmth and appreciation. When the Olympics ended, Christie escaped to Hawaii and "the northern-most town on the northern island."
Then he went on a beer binge of a different kind. For five weeks, he toiled at a German brewery learning the business, everything from how the beer is made to how it's bottled and kegged and distributed. When he's finished sliding, Christie would like to work in the beer industry. Having that option gave him peace of mind when it came time to return to luge.
"I knew after the 2010 Games I wanted to do something different," Christie said. "I'm happy to be back [competing]but I'm taking it year by year now. We'll see how it far goes."
For Saturday's race, Christie will be sliding on the same track where he first committed to luge years ago. He's been working on his sled, honing his steel runners to a racer's edge, and he's adopted a different mindset from a year ago, one that allows him to concentrate on the process and not just where that places him.
"The podium? It's always in your mind. I'm not focused on results, more on sliding well," he said. "It's about what do I need to do and how do I be the best I can. I'm challenging myself to do that … I'm having fun."
Canada's other entries in the men's event include Sam Edney, who was seventh at the 2010 Olympics, and Brendan Hauptmann, who has posted his side's two best World Cups this season (14th and 19th).
The men's doubles team of Tristan Walker and Justin Snith will also compete Saturday. They're coming off a 15th-place showing in Winterberg, Germany last weekend. That was the same weekend Calgary's Alex Gough won bronze in the women's event, just the fourth World Cup medal ever won by a Canadian.
Incorrect information appeared in an earlier online version of this story. This version has been corrected.