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TROY – As the country’s Olympic luge team prepares for the next winter games, racers have called on engineers from Hudson Valley Community College to help them get an edge over competitors.

Gordy Sheer, USA Luge director of marketing and sponsorship, said teams from Germany, Austria and Latvia are adversaries and “everyone is gunning” these days, meaning that the U.S. needs a sled design that will put it out front.

The goal is to create a sled with less steel-to-ice friction that provides athletes an optimal mix of speed and maneuverability. The two parties are still in the initial stages of building the partnership, although they have a loose idea of how to proceed.

Senior students and some faculty from the college will manufacture metal parts for the sled, including its runners – sharp blades on the underside that make contact with the ice. Some parts will require customized or manual manufacturing.

“We needed knowledge, skill, brain power, someone that was reasonably close by to us and that also has world-class equipment to do the kind of work that we need to do,” Sheer said of the decision to request HVCC’s help.

Jonathan Ashdown, the college’s dean of STEM (science, technology, engineering and math), said the school is in discussions with USA luge to have the organization pay for raw materials to make the parts in exchange for students getting a real-world project to work on for their Capstone classes the coming year and several years thereafter.

Ashdown anticipated about 40 students would go through the program to devise different aspects of the sled, which will require anywhere from $50,000 to $75,000 a year in materials for manufacturing.

Sheer noted that USA luge will additionally try to offer students opportunities to be part of their mission in Lake Placid. He said one of the organization’s primary sponsors, Saint-Gobain in Watervliet, is helping design the sled’s paint, too.

The team has roughly four years to build an all-star sled with HVCC and other partners that they hope will be used in the next winter Olympics. 

“We're definitely excited. We hope to provide them with as much value as they're going to provide us,” Sheer said.

Shayla Colon is a Native New Yorker who previously worked for Hearst CT Media. She now covers business news for the Times Union in Albany, N.Y. When she's not reporting, find her working out or tucked away in a corner with a book, preferably Hemingway or Fitzgerald.