Chris Thorpe

Christopher "Chris" Thorpe (born October 29, 1970 in Waukegan , Illinois ) is a former American luge athlete .

Career

Chris Thorpe was first with his partner Gordy Sheer in the 1990s and then with Clay Ives in the first half of the 2000s one of the most successful luge athletes in the two-seater. He took part in the Olympic Games four times. For the first time, he started with Sheer at the Albertville Games in 1992 (12th place), then in 1994 (5th place) in Lillehammer and 1998 in Nagano , where the doubles behind the Germans Stefan Krauße and Jan Behrendt and ahead of their fellow countrymen Mark Grimmette and Brian Martin won the silver medal and thus the first Olympic toboggan medal for the USA. Four years later , he won the bronze medal with Ives at the Salt Lake City Games .

At the Luge World Championships in 1995 in Lillehammer and 1996 in Altenberg , he won the silver medal with Sheer. After Thorpe / Sheer finished third in the overall World Cup ranking in the 1994/95 and 1995/96 seasons , they won the overall ranking of the Luge World Cup 1996/1997 . It was the first victory of non-European tobogganists in the overall World Cup. Double came fourth twice more. Four times they were able to win World Cup races. In the 1994/95 season, the double came on the podium in ten out of eleven races. He won the title of US champion six times, between 1992 and 1995 and 1997 and 2000, and Thorpe was luge of the year in the USA four times.

successes

World Cup victories

Two-seater

No.	date	place	train
1.	Feb 11, 1995	Sigulda	Sigulda luge and bobsleigh track
2.	0Dec. 1, 1996	Sigulda	Sigulda luge and bobsleigh track
3.	Dec 15, 1996	Altenberg	Altenberg racing sled and bobsled run
4th	Dec 22, 1996	Koenigssee	Combined artificial ice rink at Königssee

Web links

• Short biography at qsports
• Chris Thorpe in the database of the International Luge Federation
• Chris Thorpe in the Sports-Reference database (English; archived from the original )