Whenever she competes, Sophia Kirkby, age 24, holds her father’s words in her hands. More specifically, the U.S. world champion doubles luge athlete writes quotes from his last messages to her on her gloves, worn during every run. On the first pair she wrote, “I’m very proud of her.” On the next, “Everything’s going really, really good.”
Kirkby’s father, James, a former bobsledder for the U.S. Air Force, who first introduced her to sliding in Lake Placid near their home when she was 8 years old, died last summer from prostate cancer. He was a key supporter throughout her career, driving her to practices and, even when most sick, staying up until 3 a.m. to watch coverage of her competitions.
“My dad was my number one fan,” Kirkby said. “He didn’t know how to luge. He didn’t have any coaching or insight into my Olympic sport. However, he was there for all the little things I needed.”
She’s not the first to write personal notes or messages of support on the highly-specialized gloves lugers must use to build speed during the initial phase of a run, Kirby said. But when listening to the messages from her father, recorded in the final months of his life, she decided to use his words as a motivator, and a means to keep him with her as she continued her career.
“He told me, ‘Soph, I’d like you to think that I’m there pulling and pushing with you,’” she said. “And that’s why it meant so much to me to have his words on my hands, because he really was pulling and pushing with me.”
The 2024-25 season was one of the best for Kirkby and her luge partner Chevonne Forgan. They won their very first World Cup in Lillehammer, Norway, and then it was announced their discipline would be included in the Olympic schedule for the 2026 Milan Cortina Winter Olympics.
While she was thrilled with her World Cup win, and the impressive times the team had posted, Kirkby said she couldn’t help but feel bittersweet her dad wasn’t with her to enjoy her success.
“I had raced so many races, and he missed the one I won,” Kirkby said. “But it’s okay. He was there with me. But he would’ve gotten a kick out of last season, that’s for sure.”
Kirkby said while returning to her sport so soon after losing her dad has been hard, her team has been very supportive. Occasionally, she will just need some time to be sad, and she said the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee were very lenient, giving her a schedule that worked for her needs. By the end of the summer, she felt able to return in full force, and so far, the early season is ramping up well with the duo clocking a 5th place finish at World Cup in Park City last weekend.
Unlike bobsled and skeleton – the other two sports classified as “sliding sports” – lugers typically start training in the sport from a young age. When her father first brought her to the track, Kirkby didn’t immediately fall in love with the sport. “My very first run, I was terrified,” she said. “I did not like it.” But then her dad asked her how it was and if she was ready to try again. “I low key lied to him and said it was great.” She kept sliding for the rest of the day, and after that it became their fun weekend activity together.
After entering her first competitions, Kirkby quickly found success, beating much older kids who’d been in the sport for longer. Her father had to source a sled from Latvia, because she was too little for the sleds available closer to home (she could barely reach her feet to the kufens – the candy cane-shaped steel that lugers use to steer the sled with their calves). USA Luge quickly singled Kirkby out, putting her on the development team when she was 10 years old.
Around the same time she started luge, Kirkby began another hobby that one day would turn into a passion: pottery. “Don’t even get me started – I love pottery,” Kirkby said. She began taking classes at the Lake Placid Center for Arts, and during the pandemic she started the artform up again, using it as an outlet for stress and artistic expression.
“Creating pottery with my hands has allowed me to grieve my father’s death just by taking my mind somewhere else,” she said.
She made her teammate, Emily Fischnaller, and her husband, Italian luger Dominik Fischnaller, their wedding gift, she made Ashley Farquharson a garlic grater, and she often is seen sporting a pair of earrings, small espresso mugs wrapped in wire, that she hopes to turn into an entire series for all the women’s doubles athletes who make it to the Olympics.
“Pottery has been shown to be great for brain health,” Kirkby said. “You have to combine both creativity and strategy. Pottery has been a great means for stress relief. In the morning I train hard for the Olympics, and in the afternoon, I go to the pottery studio.”
Unlike the regimentation of training for a sport where results can be decided by the thousands of a second, there's a freedom to how she approaches her pottery. Maybe she’ll throw a ball of clay on the wheel, and then set it aside, picking up something she started days earlier to paint it and fire it. “It’s not like cookies. You can leave them out and they won’t expire,” she said.
Kirkby is looking forward with excitement to the 2026 Milan Cortina Olympics, where both of her passions – luge and pottery – will be celebrated. “I’m potentially working with a local shop in Cortina, Italy,” Kirkby said. “We’re going to try to sell all of my pins and espresso earrings, as well as my collaborations with other Olympians.” She’ll be making magnets of their likenesses as well, and while she won’t be able to sell anything under her own name, due to a rule in the Olympic code, she will be selling them with the moniker, ‘Women’s doubles luge enthusiast.’
“No one has sold handmade products ever as an Olympic athlete competing in the Games,” she said. “I feel so proud that I’m going to be the first.”