Friday, February 8, 2002
Lueders of the pack
It took some time but Pierre finally found his calling
By TERRY JONES -- Edmonton Sun
SALT LAKE CITY -- Kate Lueders was cool with her kid Pierre playing hockey and football. Boxing she didn't mind. Skiing was OK. She didn't even have a problem with the lad riding a motorcycle or a snowmobile.
"But when he took up this sport, I was not pleased,'' she said.
Mama, don't let your babies grow up to be bobsledders?
When Pierre Lueders was a kid he had the Olympic dream, he just didn't have the sport.
"I always had the dream. I always wanted to be an athlete at a very high level,'' said the Edmonton pilot who won a gold medal in two-man bobsled in Nagano in 1998 and is here to try to win another one.
"I remember visiting my cousin in Germany when I was young and watching Bruce Jenner win the decathlon at the Montreal Olympics. That's when I first thought it would be neat.
"I just spent a long time searching for the sport to get me there. I tried everything. I have a wide variety of sporting background.''
He started young.
LUEDERS' LEAP OF FAITH
Kate says she knew little Pierre was going to be different when he was just a rug rat.
"He couldn't walk yet but he kind of jumped around on the floor like a little rabbit,'' she recalled. "He was always in action. He never sat still.''
When he found his legs, they immediately put skates on them.
"He could hardly stand up when we put him on skis and skates,'' she said.
Shortly after he found his legs, he also found his arms.
"He always seemed to have a ball of one kind or another,'' she laughed.
"We belonged to the Royal Glenora Club since he was a baby and we had him swimming right away.
"He had boxing gloves and a big sack to hit, a basketball net ... he was into everything. He wanted to do every sport available.
"Heinz (his father) had him in scuba diving,'' she said of her husband. "That was the only sport he didn't like.
"Heinz bought him a lot of sports equipment. He loved driving around the acreage on a dirt bike. On the ski hill he went straight down. There was no snow plow. To pilot a bobsled, you can't have fear. He never had that fear.
"He had a big, heavy bag to hit with his boxing gloves. He played hockey every year until he was 13 and somebody put him on crutches with a leg injury and he came back and hurt his collarbone. I remember him deciding to quit hockey saying, 'Mom, next thing I'm going to lose my teeth. That's the end of that.' ''
Living on the acreage, Pierre attended county schools in Winterburn. He went to Jasper Place high school where he played football.
But over the years, his love turned out to be track.
"We always thought he'd make the Olympics in track and field,'' said his mom. "We actually believed he could make it.''
His cousin in Germany didn't.
It's not often when somebody wins a gold medal at the Olympics that you see the athlete hug a sportswriter. But Lueders did just that in Nagano because his cousin the sportswriter was the guy who had told him to take up bobsled.
"I was running through a forest in Germany with him in 1989 when he told me, 'Why don't you try bobsled?' '' remembered the Edmonton-born Lueders of a trip to Europe when he was 19.
"He knew I was a crappy track and field athlete,'' said Lueders, who was good in about five of the 10 events of the decathlon.
WHAT ARE COUSINS FOR?
Guenter Meinhart, his cousin who covers the sport, even went so far as to give him a bunch of books. Lueders finally found his sport that day. And he wishes Canada could figure out a way to find athletes like Pierre Lueders and help them find their sports.
"I see so many young Canadians end up in a sport, don't make it and then quit everything,'' he said.
Lueders also hopes as many Canadians as possible win a gold medal so they can experience what he's already experienced.
Don't expect to make any money, he cautions. But expect to make memories. And make sure that if you win one, you take it to the kids.
"I tried to keep track of how many kids touched the (1998 gold) medal. I let them put it around their necks and everything," he smiled. "I know at least 10,000 of them touched it. It might even be 15,000.
"It's not the money," stressed Lueders of the thrill. "It's the faces of those kids. That's the payoff.''
2002 Games Bobsleigh Coverage
