credits: Jamie Squire, Getty Images

Hamlin at Luge WC in Calgary, Nov 21, 09

After all, it marks the sweetest moment of Hamlin’s luge career — an 80 mph trip down an ice-coated mountainside track that carried the American who turned 23 on Thursday to a place many thought impossible to reach.

She beat the unbeatable Germans for a gold medal in the world championships.  “A miracle,” said USA Luge executive director Ron Rossi.

This February, she’ll try again, with higher stakes. Olympic gold will be on the line.

Hamlin formally opens the defense of her world championship when the World Cup luge series opens in Calgary, Alberta. The Germans will be gunning for her, as will everyone else on the circuit. Hamlin certainly knows that and is embracing what she sees as an ultimate challenge.

“Everything is totally different now,” Hamlin said. “It’s going to be night and day compared to the last Olympics. Before, I was the young kid who wasn’t supposed to go. It’s definitely going to be the polar opposite. But it’s four years later, I’ve matured a lot and hopefully the experiences I’ve had between then and now has evened everything out.”

Well, perhaps.  The scoreboard, however, still shows Germany with a decided advantage.

In luge, the sport where racers slide on their backs, feet-first and at breakneck speed down a track while using only subtle shifts of their bodies to steer, there’s Germany and then there’s everybody else — at least on the women’s circuits. Germans had won 99 straight international races before last season’s world championship and Hamlin’s victory.

“Breaking a 99-race streak by arguably the most dominant force in any sport was amazing and ranks among the greatest moments in U.S. winter sports history,” said USA Luge’s Gordy Sheer, a 1998 Olympic silver medalist and now an official within the federation. “It’s the most under-recognized miracle on ice.”

In 2009, Hamlin was coming off an eighth-place finish in the most recent World Cup race before those world championships, finishing two runs at Altenberg 1.194 seconds behind German winner Natalie Geisenberger — who led a 1-2-3-4 finish by her countrywomen. In luge, a gap of 1.194 seconds over two runs is about as decisive as a 10-3 loss in hockey, a colossal margin.

Somehow, everything changed for Hamlin in Lake Placid, where she won the two-run competition by 0.187 seconds.

“Her winning at worlds definitely gave me hope,” said Kate Hansen, a 17-year-old who’s now Hamlin’s teammate on the World Cup team. “I’ve always had hope, but just to see her finally do it, it was like it told all of us that ‘Yeah, we can do some damage at the Olympics. It can be possible.’ I strive to be like Erin, because she wasn’t really fazed by all the stardom that she got.”

Doing it once, that’s one thing. The trick is doing it again.

Hamlin was 12th as a 19-year-old at the Turin Olympics, racing without the burden of expectation. She speaks with respect and reverence for the German machine, with good reason.

“It’s like the Tiger effect,” Hamlin said, referring to Tiger Woods’ hold on the No. 1 ranking in golf. “You go to a golf course and automatically play worse because Tiger’s there. It happens in luge, too. If the Germans are going to race … Put it this way, there’s been a lot of times that I’ve placed fifth and people are like, ‘Well, you won,’ because I was the first non-German. And that’s not how it works.”

Not anymore.  Not for her, anyway, not after winning a world title.

After Vancouver, the folks at The Soda Fountain might have to re-name that sundae.

“I’m getting acknowledged for what I’ve done and what I’ve worked for,” Hamlin said. “It’s kind of refreshing. But if I never become famous for being a world champion luge athlete, is that going to bother me? Not completely, because I know what I’ve accomplished. And I want to accomplish more.”

(Also published in ESPN.com, Forbes.com, Denver Post, ABC News, NBC2Utica)

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