Pennsylvania luger’s Olympic dreams won’t be slowed by a broken finger

Summer Britcher, a York County native, has faced her share of obstacles en route to her third Olympics. She's the all-time luge singles leader for the U.S. with five World Cup victories.

Summer Britcher speeds down the track during the women's race at the Luge World Cup in Igls near Innsbruck, Austria, in December.Read moreMatthias Schrader / AP

by Matt Breen

Published Feb. 2, 2022, 10:15 a.m. ET

Summer Britcher boarded a flight this month in Switzerland that would take her to her third Olympics as a member of the U.S. luge team. But her path to the Games in Beijing started almost by accident.

Britcher, a York County native, was skiing at a resort in Adams County with her family when USA Luge happened to be hosting a recruiting event. They set up a luge track on the slopes with plastic sleds and official timing systems, giving children a taste of what it felt like to barrel down frozen tracks at breakneck speeds.

Britcher was hooked, repeatedly trudging back up the hill to race against her older brothers. A representative from USA Luge noticed her energy and invited Britcher’s parents to bring her to tryouts in Lake Placid, N.Y.

“My parents thought it over and asked me if I wanted to go,” she said. “I said ‘Of course. I get to get out of school for a week.’ I was in the sixth grade. I tried the sport out for fun and I fell in love.”

That love took Britcher, 27, around the world as she competed in places like Latvia and Austria and raced at the Olympics in Sochi, Russia, and Pyeongchang, South Korea. But it would also lead to an obsession with competition, draining Britcher of the love she had for the sport when she was just a kid on Liberty Mountain.

The year after her last Olympics, Britcher wrote on Instagram, was one of the hardest years of her life. She spent six weeks of 2019 in bed, skipped training sessions, and showed her face just enough that no one would be worried before the start of another World Cup season.

The 2018 Olympics — Britcher did not medal after entering as a favorite — had left her “mentally and emotionally broken.” Her motivation to compete — the spirit that kept pushing her up that hill to beat her brothers — was gone.

“When the World Cup season started, I did not want to be there,” Britcher wrote. “That year, I finished fifth in the world. I would fake a smile on the podium and lie about how good it felt to be there. Routine and habits carried me pretty far, but ultimately I had to restructure how I thought about sport and competing. I had to learn that it’s OK for me to take up space as an athlete who doesn’t fit the mold of motivation and enthusiasm that is expected. Trying to find motivation that you lost is like a treasure hunt with no map.”

Britcher rediscovered her love near the end of that 2019-20 season. She was motivated again.

“My drive and motivation used to be so huge a part of me that I felt like I would die if I couldn’t compete,” Britcher wrote. “Now, training and competing is a choice I make every day. I love competing again, but staying motivated and putting in the work is not effortless. It is as much a part of my training as lifting weights or sliding and sometimes more exhausting with more difficult choices.”

With her new outlook, Britcher became the first member of the luge team to qualify for the Olympics when she secured a spot in January. Britcher, who is the all-time singles leader for the U.S. with five World Cup victories, earned a silver medal at a World Cup event in Russia and earned her spot on the team with a fifth-place finish in Germany.

But in her next race after qualifying, Britcher crashed and broke her finger.

“It’s not cracked. It’s not a little broken. It’s snapped all the way through and then moved away and rotated a little. So it’s not great,” Britcher said. “It’s so absurd that I almost have to laugh.”

“In any other context, it’s a bone that’s really not important. It’s just the tip of my finger. Even in a lot of other sports, it wouldn’t matter. But I just so happen to be doing the one sport where a huge part of it is slamming my fingertips into a solid object as hard as I can. I’ve spent 16 years perfecting the technique of slamming my fingertips into ice as hard as I can and now I’m in this position where ‘OK. I have to figure something else out.’”

Doctors told Britcher that her finger, essential to starting the sled at the top of the slope, would likely be healed by the Olympics. But she still needed to find a way to compete in the last World Cup events as they would be used for Olympic seeding.

So Britcher improvised, strapped her spikes to her knuckles instead of her fingers and used a technique that was last popular in the 1990s during a January race in Switzerland. It was her final competition before boarding the flight to the Olympics.

“I’ve had some comments like ‘Who cares what happens to your finger? Just push through it, whatever,’” Britcher said. “Four years ago, I would have done anything to have the fastest start that I could and I wouldn’t have cared how much damage I caused to my finger. I would not have been looking into the future beyond that Olympic competition.”

“Now I’m sitting here and I really want to do well and I’m willing to push through any amount of pain that I’ll have to. But if the doctors tell me that if you paddle you’re going to cause further damage or potentially irreparable damage, then I’m not willing to harm myself further for the sake of success. If I have to knuckle-paddle at the Olympics, I will. I’m totally willing to push through pain if they tell me it’s healed enough that it’ll hurt but you won’t break it further, which is what I’m hoping for. It’s just knowing that I’m valuing my own health and safety above a result.”

Britcher was an underdog at the 2014 Olympics in Sochi, finished 15th, and returned home ready for next chance at the Games. When her trip to Pyeongchang in 2019 ended with disappointment, it broke her.

But now Britcher — in her third Olympics — has regained the love she first found by accident. Her finger is broken, but she believes her mind is stronger.

“I think I’m in a space where I can just enjoy the act of competing at the highest level,” Britcher said. “That’s why I started doing this because I always loved competing. I had that true joy in Sochi because I was a true underdog and got to enjoy the whole experience of ‘I’m competing at the Olympics. I’m competing at the Games.’ It was really incredible. In Pyeongchang, I have to say I enjoyed it less just because I put so much pressure on myself to succeed. I entered third in the world and it all kind of came crumbling down when I didn’t medal. It was hard to process.”

“I’m hoping that everything I’ve learned and grown from and had those experiences, that I’ll be able to put everything I have out on the line and just compete to the best of my ability and the runs will speak for themselves.”