BY GEORGE ALBANO
Staff Writer
Above, Aaron Gittleman (center) is all smiles after winning a U.S. National Youth Luge Championship in Lake Placid, N.Y., in February. Aaron Gittleman always thought lacrosse was going to be his sport. After all, he loves it, played it all three years he was at Crossroads Middle School, and plans to continue to do so this spring as a freshman at South Brunswick High School.
But as far as his choice of sports goes, a recent family vacation to Lake Placid changed all that. Gittleman discovered a new sport he wanted to get involve in: Luge racing. You know, where you lie in a sled flat on your back and fly down a track at high speeds while steering with your feet. Not an easy task by any means.
But today, a little more than two years after he began competing, 14-year-old Aaron Gittleman of South Brunswick is a national champion in his new sport. Gittleman captured first place at the Verizon U.S. Youth National Championships for boys 16-and-under on Feb. 27 at Lake Placid, right where his journey began three years earlier in February of 2002.
That’s when the Gittleman family took a vacation to the site of the 1932 and 1980 Winter Olympics. They were also there at the same time the 2002 Winter Olympics were going on in Park City, Utah, which only added to the festive atmosphere at Lake Placid.
“I’ve always loved Winter Olympic sports. Those are my favorites,” Neal Gittleman, Aaron’s father, said. “Lake Placid is a major training ground for all kinds of Winter Olympic sports like ski jumping, speed skating, the biathlon.
“And with the Olympics going on in Park City while we were in Lake Placid, there was a real Olympic spirit there. Every restaurant you went in had the Olympics on TV 24 hours a day. They really got caught up in the Olympic spirit.”
One of the attractions the village in Lake Placid offered tourists was a ride on a bobsled down the original track used in 1932.
“It was a money maker for New York State,” Gittleman explained. “They had a driver and a brakeman.”
The Gittleman family decided to take a ride on it, but no one enjoyed it more than young 12-year-old Aaron.
“It was great,” he said this week as he recalled the experience. “Once you start going down the track and pick up speed, it’s such a rush. You’re not doing any work. You’re just riding in a giant sled. It was just amazing.”
And from that experience, a new favorite sport, a new passion, and eventually a new career was hatched.
“Aaron loved it so much,” he father said.
Call it fate, but shortly after the Gittlemans returned home, Neal Gittleman, a general dentist, met Doug Bateman, a patient of his from Somerville who just happened to have competed in the 1984 Winter Olympics in Sarajevo.
“That coincidence was huge,” Gittleman said. “I told him about our vacation and he told me how Verizon, a major corporate sponsor for luge racing, sponsors something called the Verizon Slide Search. He said certain members of the national team travel around the country and they have a luge sled with in-line skate wheels attached to it.
“What they do is block off a city street with a light steep to it, put bales of hay along the side, and send the kids down. Some end up in the bales of hay and some end up going right down the middle of the street.”
Gittleman decided to look into it. He checked the organization’s Web site and saw there was a Verizon Slide Search coming to Philadelphia that June.
“So I signed Aaron up and brought him there,” he said. “They travel around and screen 600 kids all over the country, including Hawaii. Out of that 600, they invited about 100 to Lake Placid in November to try it out on ice, and from that 100, about 15 or so are asked to join the Junior National team.”
And, lo and behold, Aaron was one of the 15 they asked to join.
“The first time I did it, I just weaved in and out of cones. It was great,” Aaron said. “I was just going along for the ride, though. I had no idea it was going to play out like this.”
Aaron made tremendous progress and in the winter of 2003-04 he made the Junior Development team. He did so well there, he was promoted to the Junior Team Candidate Select level this winter.
There are eight levels of U.S. luge teams, the Junior Development team being the lowest and the U.S. Olympic team, of course, being the highest. The Junior Team Candidate Select, Gittleman’s current status, is the second rung on the ladder.
But he’s moving up rapidly. Last year, in just his first year of competition, he competed in the same Verizon U.S. Youth National Championships for 16-and-under and placed fifth.
“I actually finished pretty well for my first year,” he said.
He did well enough to be invited to race in the U.S. Junior National Championships for 20-and-under a week later, quite an accomplishment for someone just 13 years old. He raced in that event again this past Sunday at Lake Placid and finished ninth in a field comprised of much more experienced racers.
But it was a week earlier, at the 16-and-under U.S. Youth National Championships, where Aaron Gittleman really shined. He was one of 25 racers, each of whom made two runs down the track. He was the eighth racer to go and his first-run time of 46.097 seconds left him all alone in first place after the first round.
Eli Cain of Michigan was second with a 46.543, a margin of 0.446 behind Gittleman.
“I was almost five-tenths of a second ahead of the second-place guy, which is a pretty nice gap,” Gittleman said.
For the second round, racers went in reverse order according to their place in the standings, which meant Gittleman would go last and Cain second to last.
“As all the other guys were going down on their second run, I was checking their times and adding it up to their first time.”
And each time, he was still ahead. Finally Cain went and recorded a 46.232, giving him a combined time of 1:32.775. Gittleman had to do under 46.678 seconds to secure the championship, and he did so with a time of 46.363 seconds.
About the only thing that could have knocked him out of first was if he hit the wall hard going down.
“I actually did come real close to hitting near the last curves,” he said. “But I didn’t hit too hard. I just brushed against the wall. It didn’t cost me too much, just three-tenths of a second.”
The cushion he built in the first round, however, was enough to hold off Cain and give Gittleman first place.
“Once I crossed the finish line and saw the clock and knew I had won, I was so excited. My parents and all my teammates were all there clapping me on. It was amazing.
“It was so unexpected. I knew the competition I was up against and I was actually just hoping to finish in the top five again and get a medal. But not a national championship. I never expected that. Two years ago I had no idea this could ever happen.”
And just think, it all began with a family vacation. Chevy Chase and the Griswolds never had such a good time.
While the elite-level racers begin at the top of the track and get up to speeds of 90 mph or faster, racers in junior competition start down the track a little with peak speeds of 70 mph.
“And contrary to common belief, you are driving down the hill,” Gittleman laughed. “You’re not just lying there enjoying the ride.”
Gittleman has certainly been enjoying the ride since he started competing. It hasn’t come without sacrifices, however. Gittleman has had to make numerous six-hour trips to Lake Placid to train, sometimes staying two to three weeks at a time.
“I’ve put a lot of miles on my Mountaineer,” Neal Gittleman laughed.
“I’ve had to miss a lot of school,” Aaron added. “This last time, to get ready for the Nationals, I was there five out of six weeks. I bring all my books from school and my teachers fax me or e-mail me all my work.”
He also gives a lot of credit to his mother, Cindy Gittleman.
“My mother has been a huge help keeping in touch with all my teachers.”
There’s not much of an off season, either.
“We do a lot of training in the summer, a lot of weight lifting and a lot of getting in shape,” Aaron said. “I go back to Lake Placid and they take the blades off the sled and put in-line skating wheels on it, and when the ice melts we practice on the concrete.”
Aaron Gittleman hopes all the hard work pays off for him in the future. When you reach this level, it’s certainly not too far fetched to start thinking about the Winter Olympics and making the U.S. National Team. Not in 2006, but Gittleman will be 20 years old when the 2010 games in Vancouver take place, and only 24 in 2014, just about the average age of the top luge racers on the current Olympic team.
“I always wonder how far I can take it. All the time,” he admits. “Making it to the Olympics is my ultimate goal.”
It could happen, too. But first, Aaron Gittleman has to get ready for lacrosse season this spring.