Like most Mainers, Julia Clukey will spend much of October getting ready for winter.
But while others are stacking wood piles or are having their home furnaces cleaned, the 2010 U.S. Olympian from Augusta is in Lillehammer, Norway, preparing for the World Cup luge season that begins in November.
Training runs at the home of the 1994 Winter Olympics got underway Friday morning, according to USA Luge.
Clukey — who finished 17th in the women’s luge at the 2010 Winter Games in Vancouver, British Columbia, before missing a berth on the 2014 U.S. team by 0.013 seconds — is among six recent U.S. Olympians training in Norway.
“I am excited for the new season and feel really ready,” said Clukey, who captured her seventh career USA Luge start championship last month on the indoor ramp at the team’s training facility in Lake Placid, New York. “My starts were good over the summer.”
Clukey announced last spring she would continue to compete internationally for at least one more season. Two seasons ago, she was the top American woman on the World Cup tour. She capped off her 2012-13 season with a career-best silver medal in the Lake Placid World Cup.
“I know that Norway tries hard to get the ice ready,” Clukey said of the training camp. “I’ll be trying to get a good rhythm for the World Cup season. Sliding is something I love to do, and it’s a bonus to be able to do it.”
Erin Hamlin of Remsen, New York, bronze medalist at the 2014 Winter Olympics, leads the U.S. contingent in Norway but has not slid down a track since her final run in Sochi, Russia, which clinched the first singles medal in American Olympic luge history.
The three-time Olympian and 2009 world champion spent time on her sled during the offseason indoors at Lake Placid.
“This is the longest I’ve ever been off a sled,” Hamlin told USA Luge. “Hopefully I’ll feel good. I want to get comfortable on the sled again and get back into it. I want to have fun. The ‘having fun’ mindset worked for me in Sochi.”
The U.S. men in Lillehammer include two-time Olympian Chris Mazdzer of Saranac Lake, New York, and his Sochi teammate Tucker West of Ridgefield, Connecticut.
Lillehammer also will mark the international debut of a new U.S. doubles unit as Matt Mortensen and Jayson Terdiman, 2014 Olympians with different teammates, partnered last spring.
The camp will conclude Oct. 11 with the Lillehammer Cup, a non-World Cup competition that will provide the teams a gauge on their sliding just six weeks prior to the official start of the racing season.
The U.S. team will return to Lake Placid on Oct. 12 in anticipation of opening its home track on Mount Van Hoevenberg on Oct. 18, weather permitting.
The Norton National Championships will be held there Nov. 1-2, and a World Cup meet is set for the venue on Dec. 5-6.
