By By KEVIN SCOTT CUTLER
Lifestyles & Features Editor
When the 2010 Winter Olympics kick off Feb. 12 in Vancouver, there will be at least one local fan who’s had a brush with Olympic fame.
Chris Cabral, a ranger at Goose Creek State Park near Washington, competed in the luge event in Olympic trials in the early 1990s.
He’ll speak about his experiences during a special program planned for Friday, beginning at 7 p.m. in the park’s Environmental and Education Center. The event is free and the public is welcome.
Cabral’s interest in the sport, which involves careening down a track while lying face up and feet first on a sled, began at an early age.
“When I was 13 I watched the 1984 Olympics,” said Cabral, who grew up in Concord, Calif., near San Francisco. “When luge came on I remember telling my parents that was something I’d like to do.”
Soon after, during a family outing to the Sierra Nevada Mountains, Cabral experimented with a small plastic sled. He was hooked.
“A serious desire started at that point,” he recalled. “I sent a letter to the U.S. Olympics committee and they sent me a package of information.”
From 1984 to 1988, Cabral said he “struggled and worked hard to try to figure how to do the sport.”
By 1989 he improved to the point that he began to compete in different races and record some decent times. He made the national team in 1990, a non-Olympic year, and began looking ahead to the 1992 Winter Olympics to be held in Albertville, France.
“The qualifying trials were held in Lake Placid, N.Y., and you really battled for the top three spots,” said Cabral, who now lives in Greenville. “I drew the number to go down the hill first and I remember it was very cold and there was ice on my face. I got my best time ever on that first run.”
Things were looking good.
“For at least 15 minutes I was in the top three,” Cabral said with a laugh. “After the first heat I was in fourth place, and that’s as good as it got. I ended up finishing ninth, and I was ahead of people I probably shouldn’t have been ahead of.”
During some of his time as a luge competitor, Cabral lived and trained at the U.S. Training Center in Lake Placid. He showed up at the facility when the weather turned cold and left when it got warm.
“It was a very interesting environment, with athletes in and out weekly,” he said. “The Winter Olympics schedule was changed then, so there were only two years between Olympics.”
So, in 1994, Cabral competed to be one of the top three luge athletes to represent the United States in Lillehammer, Norway.
“I was attending school, but I decided to stick around and try again,” Cabral said. “I ended up finishing ninth out of 25 people trying out.”
By that time, Cabral was married and, in his own words, “getting old for the world of luge.”
Life was taking him in other directions, so he packed away his gear and put his Olympic dreams behind him. But he said he has good memories of that period of his life.
Cabral recalls watching Nancy Kerrigan in a figure skating event before she became a world class competitor, and he met Prince Albert of Monaco, a fellow winter sports enthusiast.
He had the opportunity to appear as an extra in the made-for-television film, “The Abduction of Kari Swenson,” based on the true story of an Olympic athlete who was kidnapped and imprisoned by mountain men.
He also saw quite a bit of the world, traveling and training in Austria, Germany, Yugoslavia, Latvia, Canada and Russia.
In fact, one of Cabral’s most cherished souvenirs from that time is a racing suit given to him by a luge competitor from the former Soviet Union. He plans to bring along the suit, a racing helmet and his 50-pound luge sled for Friday’s program.
Cabral and his wife, Gay, have four sons — Langston, Evan, Peyton and Blake — all of whom are sports enthusiasts like their dad, although their interests revolve around soccer, basketball and baseball. He’s shared his luge experiences with them, and he plans to park himself in front of the TV and take in this year’s winter games.
“A buddy of mine is a six-time Olympian and he’ll be there in Vancouver,” Cabral said. “His name is Mark Grimmette and he’s won silver and bronze — he’s the first American to win luge medals. I was so proud.”
Cabral says he stays in touch with a few of his former competitors.
“We had a luge reunion about five years ago,” he said. “It’s a little family, and I’ll always be a part of that family.”