Local lugers Niccum, Hoeger happy to be here

CESANA PARIOL, Italy — This is what makes the Olympics the Olympics.

Christian Niccum is 28 years old, lives in Woodinville and competes for the United States. Werner Hoeger is 52, teaches at Boise State and competes for Venezuela. Two men with seemingly nothing in common, they have shared a dream and a patch of ice running straight down an Italian mountain and odds longer than the luge track on Saturday.

Neither were overjoyed with the way the first day ended; they finished 27th and 35th, respectively, in a 36-man field. Italy's Armin Zoeggeler was first, Russia's Albert Demtschenko second, while Tony Benshoof was third, on the verge of becoming the sport's first American medalist.

But Niccum and Hoeger both were overjoyed with the experience, the feeling at the finish line, the reasons they deemed themselves crazy enough to try luge in the first place cemented and confirmed.

"It's the whole world coming together for sport," Niccum said, his smile cutting through the frigid air. "That's such a wonderful feeling, just being here."

This is how they made it here — two paths with different starting points and different ending points that just happened to converge in the middle.

Niccum took up the sport at 12, narrowly missed making the Olympic team in 1998 and didn't compete in 2002. That was only the beginning.

Real perspective came since last summer, when Niccum endured (in order): an injured back that forced him idle for six weeks; a crash on Curve 18 on this course in November that cracked his helmet and gave him a concussion; narrowly missing a spot on the U.S. doubles team in which he felt he had a chance to medal; and skipping the opening ceremony in hopes of a run better than the one run he finished Saturday.

"Maybe I should have gone," Niccum quipped, before getting serious. "Things haven't been going as expected for me. It hasn't been my Olympic dream exactly. Going into this race I was just hoping — maybe I'll have a miracle."

That's all Hoeger could hope for going in. He always dreamed of carrying his country's flag into an Olympic Stadium just like he did on Friday night — only that dream took more 30 years to become reality.

Hoeger always thought he'd be an Olympic gymnast. He trained for that in the late 1960s in Venezuela and in college in the early '70s at BYU. He kept training long after the dream died — "I was still doing double-back somersaults at age 40," Hoeger said — and still never expected this.

Never expected the Venezuelan flag would catch his eye during the opening ceremony in Nagano in 1998. Never expected to train with his son, Christopher, qualify for the Salt Lake City Games in 2002 and become the first father-son combo to race in the same event.

And there was the professor pin-balling off Curve 18 on Friday, back for more, bouncing off the ice and nearly crashing and still maintaining his gymnast's balance to finish and stave off disqualification.

"It's a tremendous weight on my shoulders," Hoeger said. "There are no Latin American sliders. And I feel the pressure because of my age. No one my age has ever done this. I feel the weight because people are watching me.

"But I really wasn't ready to leave the sport," Hoeger said. "I wanted another four years. And here I am."

Side by side with Niccum.

Connected by Curve 18 — a turn on the course Niccum describes as "basically going 80 miles per hour straight into a wall."

Connected by a sport, an ideal and a dream.