U.S. luger Chris Mazdzer opens up about escaping a ‘dark hole’ to win a historic Olympic medal

Chris Mazdzer made history this week when he became the first American man ever to medal in luge singles at the Olympics. His silver medal run that stunned the world was the culmination of two of the toughest seasons of his career. On Jan. 21, he posted on Instagram about how his faith in himself was fading, writing, “There comes a point where giving it everything you have and believing in yourself starts to fade away and I am almost to that point.”

Four weeks later, Mazdzer had the best run of his life and found himself on the podium. I caught up with him by phone as he worked on his sled late on Tuesday night in South Korea. He’s not done yet: The 29-year-old has another day of training runs for the Team Relay event on Wednesday and then competes in the final on Thursday.

This might be a very basic question, but what did it feel like to win a silver medal?

You know, it was weird, because the whole week and weekend before, I just felt really good. I was really one with my equipment. I knew that I was really pushing the limits on everything. But I didn’t feel nervous, just really confident in the sense that I knew I could get this done. Before my fourth run I was smiling. I was smiling! I looked back on the footage and I’m legit smiling before I took that run. Everything felt good, and in that moment, I knew I had it.

Did you know you had it during the run?

This was the hardest ice we slid on all year. That race had the most difficult conditions — there was a little layer of snow on hard ice. I knew I made a baby mistake halfway down, and the run that [Austrian gold medal-winner] David Gleirscher made was incredible. So I saw second place and I didn’t care that it wasn’t first. It was an Olympic medal. I just freaked out.

Who was the first person you saw after your run?

Well, I was still braking when my coach, Bengt Walden, ran onto the ice. I didn’t have time to turn around before he was on me, celebrating. We’ve worked so hard together, so celebrating with him was huge. Then I jumped the fence to see my friends and family. But the funny thing is that we have a harness we wear; it’s attached to our helmets so we don’t lose our heads. We pull four to five Gs in turns, so we don’t want to have our head hit the ice. The problem with that is that I’m running, trying to look up at my family, but I can’t look up because I can’t pick my head up, because I have this thing I forgot to detach. So I went over and I’m essentially staring at everyone’s feet as I’m trying to celebrate with them.

You posted an Instagram earlier this year about how you were in this very dark place and just not getting the results you wanted. It’s easy to understand how you’d feel this deep despair when you’re trying to be great — the best! — and it’s not going well. How did you go from that low to the point where you could be smiling before your fourth run at the Olympics?

There was a long period of time that I felt that way. In my previous season I didn’t have the results I thought I could achieve. I didn’t have any medals. And it got worse and worse, where there was imbalance between what I thought I could achieve and what I was actually achieving. The reason you put yourself in that dark hole as an athlete — and this shouldn’t be the case, but it is — is that an organization is spending a lot of money, and putting resources your way, and giving you so much. So you kind of base your self-worth off of results. You feel like you should be doing better.

My results weren’t the worst. I wasn’t last, but I knew I could do so much better, and it forced me to try all these different things. We tried so many different things. When we got to Lillehammer, my first run was really good, but it was still a little bit slow. And ugh, yeah, I was just kind of in this dark hole. I was looking to the Olympics, right? This is what you’ve been training for four years, for your entire life. And it was three weeks away, and nothing felt attainable.

That Instagram post came up because I left the race. I didn’t stick around for the next one because I didn’t qualify. So I walked a couple miles home and was just thinking, why do I do this? Why am I sacrificing my family, my friends? Why am I not progressing financially in life? I’m going backward. I expressed that [in the post] and people were like, well, you just had a bad result. And I’m like, no, you haven’t been here. It’s two years in the making, this photo and this feeling.

I’m my harshest critic for sure. But I will bounce back. I don’t stay like that forever — I’ll be like that for two or three hours, and then I’m totally fine. It’s like it didn’t happen. But that moment forced me to come to grips with who I am, and be completely OK with myself not as an athlete. Who I am as a person? That’s what that low did. I really had to step aside and be like, you know what? Even though I’m not having the results I want to have as an athlete, I’m still a person. I had to be truly comfortable with myself.

When did things start to turn around?

When we made it to Latvia, I spent a lot of time working with all different people on my sled. And I got sixth place. With that result, I was like, what just happened? It’s sixth place, and I’m ecstatic. I’m on top of the world. It was a big motivational boost for the Olympics because it was my best result of the year by far by. When I got to South Korea, we changed the way I was approaching things. I knew conditions were going to be really cold and there are difficult parts on the track; it’s really technical. I was like, let’s go as out of control as possible. Let’s push the limits of what we can do. Either I’m gonna medal or I’m crash. That’s what we have to do.

On the first day of training, I’m 30 percent coming out of curve nine. But instead of changing the sled, I was like, no, I know I can do this. And all of a sudden I had this strange sense of confidence. My family came over, and they’ve been fantastic to have. They had my back. It was nice to have them there, to be like, no matter what happens, we’ve got you. You’re an amazing person. What you’ve done so far in the sport is incredible; just go for it.

So I was like, if it doesn’t matter if I mess up, why am I nervous? Everything’s here. I was able to turn all that off and just enjoy sliding. I never felt nervous from the second day on. I never touched a wall out of curve nine since. It was pretty unbelievable — mentally, everything had to come together, and also my starts came along. I was no worse than a seventh place start at the Olympics. I was starting with best, sliding the best I’ve ever slid. My lines were good, my mind was good. Everything worked out perfect.

What were you thinking before your silver medal run?

Overnight I wasn’t really nervous. It was really cool David Gleirscher there. He’d never won a medal in a World Cup, even. So before the last run it was him and me, and I was like, “David, you’ve been doing awesome; let’s go out and crush this.” And he was like, “I feel the same exact way. I’m so ready for this.” Both of us are just like, let’s do this. Typically, for competitors sitting in medal positions, you’re so focused. You’ve got your game face on. But instead it’s just the two of us up there like, “yeah man, we’ve got this.”

And then you guys did crush it.

Yeah, he did a little better than I did. I was like, come on, David! But it’s a pretty awesome community of luge athletes.

Being in tune with your sled seems to be a huge part of this sport. Does equipment matter in a way that people who aren’t familiar with luge might not realize?

It’s a huge component in luge. The good thing is that the harder the ice is, the less the materials matter. It comes down more to how you set up sled, the angles, not the materials. I think that was a huge part of my success. Watching this race, it came down to who had the best lines, who had good starts, who drove the best, who held the best position.

So a harder track kind of democratizes the race?

Exactly. It lets the best athlete win.

Speaking of equipment — the story of how a Russian athlete gave you his sled when he realized he wouldn’t be able to place as well as he wanted is really incredible. That was for training runs, right? You didn’t compete on that sled, correct?

I didn’t compete on that sled, no. That’s a whole other amazing story. Coming out of this darkness, so many people have been helping me out, and they weren’t even from this country. That’s a whole crazy story in itself — we don’t even have time for it right now because I have to get going on this sled.

All I can say is that he let me take runs on it. He’s an athlete that also helps build sleds. So he was trying to help me with materials for my sled and would let me take his down to see how I liked it. If anything, I’d gain some materials and equipment that way, but it wouldn’t be his whole sled. I took two runs on it, but I’m a little too big for it, so it didn’t work out. But the fact that he was willing to do that is the most amazing thing.

It just shows how sport can bridge cultural divides, and really it really allows humans to be their best. And their worst. But it was … I wrote this whole thing after that, and I haven’t even edited it yet. I only showed two people. But I was in tears. I was so moved by that gesture. I’d never heard of that ever happening. Countries do not do that.

I’ll let you go work on your sled, but I have one more question: Do you regularly eat pieces of pizza in one bite? Your teammate Lauren Gibbs tweeted a pretty impressive video of that.

No, I think that’s just my personality coming across. I’m a little ridiculous at times. That was a combination of being provoked and me just taking it to the next level. I haven’t even seen video of it. I know it’s out there. I had to turn off all of my social media over the last two days because I still have to focus and it’s been absolutely crazy. I have a lot to catch up on in my life. So much has happened in my life that I don’t even know about. I just have no idea. I’m still focusing on another race. I think it’ll all hit me really hard on Friday.