ALEX FERLAZZO’S hometown of Townsville is better known for humidity and cyclones than ice tracks and winter sports. There hasn’t been snow there since the last ice age and there’s certainly no luge track. There isn’t even an Olympic-standard luge track anywhere in the Southern Hemisphere. And yet, somehow, Ferlazzo is about to compete at his fourth Olympic Games.
When he sits down with Men’s Health, Ferlazzo is in Lake Placid, New York. “I’ve got a three-week training block,” Ferlazzo says. “Then I’ll be heading back home for a month, and then back to the Northern Hemisphere for the Olympic season.”
This has been Ferlazzo’s life for the last decade. He made his Olympic debut in Sochi 2014, and since then long-haul flights and months away from home have become the norm. “We’re talking five or six months a year,” he says of his time overseas. “Sometimes longer.” For an athlete from a traditional winter nation, this might be inconvenient, but for an Australian luger, it’s non-negotiable.
What makes Ferlazzo’s story even more unlikely is how it began. There was no junior luge pathway, no family history in sliding sports. Instead, it started with a Pilates class. “My mum met a lady at a Pilates class who recommended I give it a try,” he says. “We went down to Sydney to try it on a wheeled sled for the first time and learn a bit more about it. I was super interested.”
He was 15 years old when he first went down a luge track, an age when most elite lugers have already spent years on ice. Before that, his sporting life looked far more conventional. “I played soccer for a long time from like under six-level,” he says. “I was a bit of an all-rounder and I did surfing too.”
Luge itself is brutally simple in theory and punishingly complex in practice. Athletes lie supine, feet-first, steering a sled down an icy chute at speeds that can exceed 130 kilometres per hour, separated from disaster by millimetres and milliseconds. Training, Ferlazzo says, revolves around three core pillars.
“The first is the start, having a super powerful start and technique,” he explains. “That’s your first initial momentum down the track. So we spend a lot of time training for that. That’s why I’m over here now just pulling starts.”
Then there’s the track itself. “Learning the tracks, because every track is different,” he says. Every corner, camber and compression must be memorised and felt. Finally, there’s the mental aspect. “The skill of it really comes down to being able to blend it together and stay relaxed and just link up the corners well. You get into a sort of flow state when it’s going really well.”
Lately, Ferlazzo’s attention has been on improving the mental side of his approach. “Since the last Olympics, I’ve really focused a lot more on the mental side of things,” he says. “I’ve been trying to find the right mindset going into competitions and training and making the most of each run.”
That mindset is crucial when everything comes down to a single run. Asked how he handles the pressure, Ferlazzo slows things down. “You try not to focus on the result at the end of the run,” he says. “It’s just about being present. I like to do a little breathing exercise before the run and just kind of take my time, even physically moving slower when I’m getting ready. I start looking around and noticing things around me and just kind of feeling my gloves on my hands and focusing on being grateful for the opportunity I have.”
It’s a mindset that has served him well. Over the past few seasons, Ferlazzo has quietly put together the best results of his career, including a fifth-place finish at the 2024 World Championships and multiple top-10s on the World Cup circuit. Heading into Milano-Cortina, he’s starting to entertain the idea of a medal. “Obviously I’d love a medal, and I think it’s not an unreasonable goal to have,” he says. Still, he’s careful not to let outcomes define him. “I don’t really like to have results-based goals.”
As only the fourth Australian luger in Olympic history, Ferlazzo has always taken the path less travelled. But as he prepares for another Olympic start gate thousands of kilometres from home, he reminds us that sheer determination can get you a long way.
The Olympic Winter Games Milano-Cortina 2026 will screen live and free on the 9Network and 9Now.
