Four years after he was badly beaten by skinheads while protecting a teammate in an East German bar, U.S. luger Duncan Kennedy is scared again.
This time, it is his sled that he fears. That and the fact that his Olympic career might end before he wants it to.For the past month, Kennedy, the man everybody always expected to bring home the country's first Olympic medal in the sport, has been sitting in a daze at home in Lake Placid, N.Y.
While his teammates have been competing in Europe for World Cup medals, a malady Kennedy was born with - a bleeding brain stem known as arteriovenous malformation - has been testing his mettle, sending him into fits of nausea and dizziness as he ponders his athletic future.
The symptoms have subsided for now. Kennedy is off his couch, has begun running errands, and last weekend even went snowboarding as he tries to muster the courage for one last shot at making the U.S. Olympic luge team.
"I am feeling considerably better, but I'm not quite right," Kennedy said Wednesday during a conference call from USA Luge headquarters in Lake Placid. "It's sort of always there, but sometimes it's a little worse than others. My balance has been a little bit strange. It's not easy."
It hasn't been since he was stricken in early November, three days into a 10-day training trip to Nagano, Japan, site of the 1998 Winter Games.
"I was sitting there in a little, teeny cubicle, literally not knowing anything at all," Kennedy said. "I didn't know what was wrong with me, and that was a little bit scary. The team was at the track all day and I was just sort of sitting there not knowing what was going on."
It was a scene reminiscent of one in 1981, when he was first affected by the disorder, and much more severely. He vomited violently, suffered extreme dizziness, came down with a case of double vision, and was partially paralyzed. "I was just a mess, pretty much," he said.
It wasn't so bad this time. When he was cleared to travel, he returned to the United States and was examined by several neurosurgeons.