`Lugenstein' Is Huge On The Luge

Lugenstein comes ripping down the highway on his back, pushing 50. He rides a half-inch above the Tarmac, lifting his head a bit, straining to peer through the visor of his motorcycle helmet past his toes. He plots his line through the zipping mountain-scape down the road. The poured-urethane wheels under his street luge roar.

Rocketing into a turn, curling his 6-foot-6, 245-pound black-leather-suited body like a banana, pushing against the long, custom-designed handles to keep the torque from pinwheeling him into traffic or into a guard rail, he feels the G-force sucking his insides, pulling him and his luge into the asphalt. "Whoaa," he goes. He gets a rush from that.

Daryl Thompson, nom de luge Lugenstein, honed his downhill skills on this run behind the Boeing plant in Everett and on Snoqualmie Pass. Last week, the Bellevue athlete brought home a silver medal and $3,500 from the Mass Luge race in Providence, R.I., where, in a surprise upset, he finished second in the Extreme Games.

The 28-year-old was by far the biggest, heaviest man in the race. He finished behind racer Mike "Biker" Sherlock. But Lugenstein beat Shawn Goulart, the fastest-rated street luger in the world.

Television cameras caught his victory speech, uttered as he rose from his board: "That time was clean. Goulart - in the toaster."

The X-Games feature new, high-impact sports, fringe sports, gravity-defying underground sports, sports that court disaster: sky surfing, bungee jumping, street luge, bicycle jumping and downhill mountain-bike racing, vertical "vert" inline skating, water sports such as kite skiing and barefoot water jumping, and an extreme decathlon called the eco-challenge.

Some of these, like the X-Games themselves, broadcast by ESPN, were created expressly for television. Equipment-mounted cameras are built into the action. Lugenstein videotaped the street lugers wiping out in 90-degree turns and blind corners behind him in his medal-winning run with a "helmet cam."

Four lugers went to the hospital that day, with broken bones and injured backs.

RAIL, the Road Racers Association for International Luge, estimates its audience at 9.5 million 12-to-34-year-olds.

Enthusiasts make their own street luges of airplane aluminum or have them made at costs of up to $4,000. To brake, they use car-tire cutouts glued to the soles of their boots.

Lugenstein, who fixes recreation equipment for Tunturi, is a well-rounded extreme athlete. He vertical snowboards in the winter. He kneeboards on water in the summer at 80 mph. He jumps his bike 15 to 20 feet in the air in BMX, bicycle motocross. He even jumped his car - a black 1978 Trans Am. He calls it "catching air."

"Ooh," he says. "That was killer."

He shows his scars: a thickly stitched, rope-thick wound on his arm from a motorcycle accident; a slice in his neck from falling out of a tree when he was 3; cuts in his stomach; cuts on his legs.

"That's a sick one, " he says, and, "That's a nice little gaper there."

How does he feel about his scars?

"I like 'em," he says.