Lugers Walker, Snith have shown going downhill fast has its upside

Often an inside joke, the Canadian bronze — aka fourth place — had become all too familiar a finish for luge doubles pair Tristan Walker and Justin Snith.

They had finished fourth four consecutive times leading into the 2014 World Cup event in Königssee, Germany, including at the 2013 world championships in Whistler, B.C., and World Cups in Lake Placid and Sochi. On the cusp of the Olympics in Sochi, this wasn't the momentum they were hoping for.

It itched at both of them, two highly competitive souls who take no half-measures when it comes to being the best they can be. Snith can be so intense he even left his childhood soccer team because he felt the other kids weren't trying hard enough. He went into luge to compete individually, and only committed to the doubles because he knew childhood friend Walker was just as passionate about winning as he was.

That's why their result at Königssee means so much to the pair. After all those close but not quite close enough moments, the number of times they've set up base camp there and essentially made it a home away from home, it was fitting that Germany was where they broke through, winning bronze for the first-ever podium finish for a Canadian pair.

"It was a little bit of relief," Snith said about winning in their second home that has provided plenty of highs and lows. "To finally do it there in Königssee of all places was really something special. I'd like to have the first one at home in front of friends and family but if it wasn't going to be home, I would draw it up to be [in Königssee] 10 times out of 10."

That was five years into their senior doubles career together. There have been both Canadian bronze finishes as well as more podium finishes since, on even bigger stages. Just teenagers at their first Olympic Games in Vancouver, Snith and Walker, both now 30, are veterans who have set a new standard for those looking to follow suit.

Marking new heights for Canadians has been nice, but in what could possibly be their final chapter on the biggest stage, Walker and Snith are hoping to add to their tally of globally recognized accomplishments in Beijing.

It's something about having just the right level of extreme with these two.

Inspired by his grandfather who was an air force pilot, Walker wants to try his hand at calling the shots at the front of a helicopter when he's ready to say goodbye to luge. As a child, Walker's parents would take him to every air show in Calgary since his father worked for Kodak, the event's longtime sponsor.

"He was always about flying and things that went fast and looked exciting," Bruce Walker said of his son.

Walker loved looking up into the stars and looking out for planes and space stations, thinking about the ones in control of making a gravitational miracle look so serene and routine.

Snith's father, Steve, was in aviation as well, working as an aircraft mechanic. Out with his dad one day, Snith saw some sleds drying in the paint shop of the hangar housing aircrafts. With his curiosity piqued, he asked what he was looking at. Someone at the shop explained that they were luge sleds and that if he wanted to ride them, it would be as simple as having his parents sign him up. Snith was fascinated. A big old aircraft might be too large and complicated to handle, but a small sled like that? Maybe he had a chance. Oh, and to try to make it work all by himself? What a treat.

Kyle Connelly, an Olympian who went on to coach Walker and Snith at various levels for the better part of a decade, first met the pair when they were 10-year-olds just looking to have fun on a sled. In Walker, Connelly saw a kid with almost a concave chest who would have plenty of room to grow physically. He also identified that both looked athletically inclined, and that while Walker was the more extroverted of the two, the wheels always seemed to be turning with Snith.

They both had their own natural advantages and disadvantages operating the sled as they grew up, Walker turning his concave chest into a convex one and growing physically stronger each and every year, while Snith's slighter frame had him developing a quick feel for how to use his shoulders to direct the sled. They developed into good individual sliders as they got into their teens, but Mike Lane, another member of the coaching staff, felt both could accentuate each other's strengths while negating the weaknesses enough to possibly be great together.