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 Smoking Pavement - Street Luger Pamela Zoolalian Feels the Heat of Asphalt
Pamela Zoolalian is not your typical street luger, but then who is. In a
sport that offers no legal place to train, where dropping a hill at 60 miles
per hour inches above egg-frying hot pavement in packs where you can wad if
you puke a wheel, street luge boarders on the insane. A metamorph of
skateboarding, boardercross, and stock car racing, it's difficult to get a
collar on the jive of this sport, not to mention the mentality of just why
someone would actually do it. Zoolalian, a fashion designer by day, street
luger by pre-dawn, clearly has her reasons. As the only woman street luger
consistently ranked in the top 10 in world pro rankings (and one of only a
handful of women to actually street luge), she's an anomaly-not to mention
the most colorful participant. Her colors are white with pink flames, from
leathers to sled to hair. "I want people to know I'm not one of the guys."
Although there are no separate divisions for men and women in street
luge, Zoolalian believes there doesn't need to be, really. "Basically, I can
get very aerodynamic [she's been clocked at over 70] and can tuck into
shekanes [turns] tighter than someone 80 pounds heavier." Although, she
admits, "There is a seriously scary factor when you're racing with people way
heavier." At the Summer X Games in '98, she wadded with others into a rubber
mat shattering her ankle and tearing tendons which kept her out of the
qualifying rounds for the '99 Games.
"It wasn't a scary thing," explains Zoolalian matter-of-factly. "My momentum
was going forward and I got sucked into the mat. It should have been hay
bales, then I would have bounced off."
Learning to luge in the 60-mile-per-hour range, though, did change her
perspective. "I lifted my head to re-adjust my helmet once. I cartwheeled
like a rag doll and could see the pavement through the visor of my helmet.
When I stopped, I had major road rash and my ankle hurt, but I duct-taped it
and shook the terror out of me. I did it again." That's when she realized the
"true beginnings" of her sport, as she puts it, and the importance of
precision while riding a sled over pavement at 88 feet per second. "You have
to be on your game completely. But then, that's the challenge, that's the
fun." -By Kathleen Gasperini
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