Winter is not quite over, but for a 16-year-old Troy Christian student winter never really ended as she aims to make the next U.S. Olympics luge team.
Goldie Miller slides down the luge course at over 80 mph and now she is getting help from some UD engineering students to help make her Olympics dream come true.
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“To see the impact we could have on such a project would be so cool,” said Ryan Latorre, one of the UD mechanical engineering students working to come up with ways to make it so Miller gets down the track faster.
The team at UD is trying new sled designs, new runners for the sleds and more comfortable fits for the athletes.
“Being able to help an Olympic athlete who is already a so talented, gain an extra edge in competition would be an honor and a privilege,” said UD student Hannah Osland.
Goldie Miller fell in love with luge four years ago.
She switched from swimming at the Englewood YMCA to hurtling down mountainsides on tiny metal sleds.
She worked to be chosen for training, then to make the US developmental team and is now officially among the US Olympic luge squad members.
Now, the help she’s getting to hopefully go to the next winter Olympics is not far from home.
“It’s crazy that its right in my backyard,” Miller said.
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Miller doesn’t seem like a daredevil, but she does have a dream.
News Center 7′s Mike Campbell caught up with the people now committed to helping her make it happen, coaches from the national luge team and her stepdad, Mark Herres.
“If we can invest the airplane here, we can make the fastest luge sled in the world for sure,” Herres said.
That’s where the UD engineering team came in.
The students are all mechanical engineering students.
They have used UD wind tunnels to test all their ideas for sleds and runners.
A tiny edge in engineering can be huge on the track.
“It’s crazy that even a little tweak in the shape of a sled can make a big difference, even the comfort of it can make a big difference, it’ll be pretty cool,” Miller said.
Miller has plenty of training times with the team going to Lake Placid, New York for camps with the Olympic hopefuls.
She also recently went to Park City, Utah for a competition, placing 6th in Youth Nationals.
But she and her dad believe they will go much faster when the UD-student generated sleds have the final prototype and are produced for the track.
“I mean its huge, it will make an immediate noticeable difference,” Herres said. “If it does what we think it is going to do, we’ve got gold medals ahead for USA luge.
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