Skip navigation

'Grandma Luge' ends career with one last win

Compromise could put 52-year-old's name on results list with a DNS

Image: Anne Abernathy
Jean-paul Pelissier / Reuters file
52-year-old luger Anne Abernathy of the U.S. Virgin Islands suffered a broken right wrist during a training crash Sunday.
Slide show
  Pictures of the Day
Check out Sunday's best Olympic images.
updated 2:47 p.m. ET Feb. 17, 2006

TURIN, Italy - Grandma Luge ended her Olympic career with a partial victory at her sixth Winter Games.

The 52-year-old luger, whose real name is Anne Abernathy, officially will be recorded on the results list at the Turin Games despite being prevented from starting her event because of an injured wrist.

Abernathy filed an application with the Court of Arbitration for Sport to be reinstated on the Olympic starters list.

Story continues below ↓
advertisement | your ad here

At a Turin hearing Friday in front of a three-man panel of CAS arbitrators, Abernathy reached an amicable agreement with the International Luge Federation, CAS said on its website.

Her name will not be reinstated on the starters list. But the federation agreed to ask the International Olympic Committee to place her on the results list as DNS — or Did Not Start.

“It was never in dispute that I was an Olympic competitor,” Abernathy said. “I just wanted it in the records.”

Abernathy crashed during a training run Sunday and broke her right wrist, prompting race director Marie-Luise Rainer to remove her from the two-day event.

Rainer’s decision was backed by race jury president Karl Zenker, a federation board member.

“I just wanted to be recognized as having worked hard to get here,” Abernathy told The Associated Press by telephone.

Even as a nonstarter here, Abernathy still qualifies as having competed at her sixth Olympic Games. Her first was at Calgary in 1988.

Abernathy agreed Friday that Rainer was right not to let her start on the perilous Cesana track — where several women lugers wrecked Monday and Tuesday.

Abernathy said she was presented with a gift from her fellow racers: the start number 31, signed by all the women’s lugers.

Slide show
Finland's Olli Jokinen (L) and Swedish D
  Emotional Moments
Feb. 26: See photos of athletes' highs and lows from Sunday.
“It made me feel good,” Abernathy said. “Michelle Despain of Argentina wrote something nice. She wrote: ’Thank you for your example, Anne.”’

Abernathy intends to carry the U.S. Virgin Islands flag at the closing ceremony in one hand; and her cherry-red racing helmet in the other — in honor of women over 50.

“Women of 50 all over the world can participate in life,” Abernathy said. “I’m passionate about my sport ... I’m not over the hill.”

Abernathy said she might race at next year’s world championships in Igls, Austria, before retiring for good.

© 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Sponsored links