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Kids from do-it-yourself backyard luge track get to try the real thing

A group of kids who had been riding saucers down a makeshift backyard luge track in Ottawa got to try the real thing Sunday, thanks to a former Olympian who heard their story.

Earlier this month CBC News visited Sylvain Mino, his family and their three 60-metre luge runs behind their home in the rural Ottawa community of Manotick. Mino started working on the runs in November and they had been a neighbourhood hit.

Chris Wightman, a luger from Ottawa who competed in the 1988 Calgary Olympics, said he heard about their backyard tracks and called Mino out of the blue, offering to bring some actual luge sleds and do run a clinic.

"Facilities are expensive, this is a fantastic way to learn," Wightman said Sunday.

This week's warm, rainy weather forced the event to be moved to the Edelweiss Valley ski resort in west Quebec, where about 20 children came to learn the basics.

"It's a snowflake that turned into a snowball that turned into a big event," Mino said Sunday.

Quick learners

Many of the kids said they had fun and learned quickly, despite having never been on an actual luge sled before.

"It's great," said Jade Karra. "I got rid of my fear of height and speeds."

"As soon as he said to hold your thumb up [on the reins] I thought, 'Oh, that's like horseback riding,'" said Ella Bulloch.

"We saw people going from not scared, but definitely fighting it at the beginning, to now you can't stop them," Mino said.

"All it took was a bit of coaching and now they're champions."

Regrowing grassroots

Wightman, who's also president of the Ontario Luge Association, said there used to be more of a grassroots luge scene in eastern Canada when the only Olympic-quality track for the country's lugers was in Lake Placid, N.Y.

But when Calgary hosted the Olympics and built a luge track, he said it shifted the focus west. The 2010 Olympic track in Whistler solidified the sport there and it fizzled out further east.

"That's what we're trying to do today, is getting luge back in the east, getting kids on sleds and getting a sense of what luge is all about," he said, adding it's the first "learn to luge" program he can think of in the capital region in about 25 years.

Both Mino and Wightman said they'd like to do a March Break luge camp at Edelweiss, weather permitting, and keep these events going next winter.

"Kids love tobogganing, this is a natural extension of that," Wightman said.

"Instead of going straight down a hill you're learning how to turn the sleds, control it, find fast lines through a course. It's great to give kids an opportunity to try a sport that's a natural Canadian sport."