Many of our finest swimmers were famously introduced to the pool before they could walk. Our tennis stars held racquets far bigger than the length of their body. Alex, however, wouldn’t discover the sport of Luge until he was visiting Sydney for the first time as a 15-year-old.

“A friend of my mum’s just happened to mention it (a luge talent search in Sydney) to my mother. My mum let her know that her son might be interested in giving that a shot,” Alex said.

For Alex to forge a path to create Australian luge history, it was going to have to take shape back in tropical Townsville. So he took the sled home from Sydney.

“Years later I was training down Mount Stuart to get the hang of steering and laying in the sled properly.”

There was something about Alex as a kid, clearly identified by his mum’s friend, that meant sport would be in his future. He was an active, excitable child constantly looking for a physical challenge.

“I was always interested in jumping off the highest rock, the highest cliff into water, doing backflips on the trampoline. I was always quite a stunt man and looking for a thrill.

"I was always moving around, it was hard to keep me still as a kid for sure.”

Unlike those who dream from a very young age of donning the green and gold, and hearing the national anthem over the speakers on the Olympic stage, Alex’s early memories with Luge weren’t attached to Olympic participation and glory.

“I wasn’t even interested in the Olympics when I first started for a few years – I was just interested in sliding and doing Luge. All of a sudden, the Olympics was a bit of a bonus and I started to notice this was the pinnacle of the sport.”

It wasn’t until Alex recognised the power of the Olympic Movement, and the spirit which enriched his community, that his Olympic dreams became a more deliberate and focussed goal.

"The Olympics make people look at life and the world a little differently and I think that’s so important to a younger crowd early in life… and later in life.

"It’s for everyone."

Whilst stepping onto the track to make his first run at the Beijing 2022 Olympic Winter Games would make Alex the longest tenured Australian luge Olympian in history, it was far from his intrinsic motivation to succeed on the Olympic stage.

“You know, I never really think about that. I'm just happy to do the best I can and compete against the rest of the field.”

His Olympic debut came at the raw age of 19 at Sochi 2014, finishing 33rd. Alex improved to finish 28th at PyeongChang 2018.

In South Korea Alex set the fastest opening run, but a drop in time over his second and third runs led him to focus his build up to Beijing 2022 on mental preparation.

“When I was a younger athlete I used to blast music into my ears before an event. Recently I’ve started putting on my noise-cancelling headphones and am not listening to anything but my thoughts. That’s been a pretty important part of my preparation leading up to events.

“For so many years I had music blaring into my ears and I would be way too hyped going into competition. Other times I’d have no music at all and then I’d start to get distracted with what’s going on around me.”

This conscious effort to become mentally stronger coincided with the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic, which made Alex more resilient.

Combined with his past Olympic experience and a ‘low-key’ nature of the COVID affected Games, Alex delivered a thunderous final run at Beijing 2022 to secure Australia’s best ever Olympic finish in Luge with a 16th place result.

“That moment to me of it all coming together and actually working out the way I thought it might, or the way I thought it might feel beforehand… it was already like I knew what that moment was going to feel like before it happened, I was just reliving it.

“It might sound strange but that was the experience I was going through at the time. It was pretty special.”

In typical Alex Ferlazzo fashion, his next steps in Luge are deeply embedded in giving back to the sport within Australia, as he continues to forge a path for the next generation of luge athletes. This is all coming off the back of a community road trip around Far North Queensland in May, where he travelled more than 1,000 kilometres to visit 13 clubs and schools.

“I’m working with Luge Australia to get a development program going. That involves designing a website and organising a Talent ID camp and the process behind starting an organisation from the ground up and getting more people involved in the sport.”

Alex is going to prepare for what would be a historic fourth Olympic Winter Games appearance at Milano-Corina 2026, but his goals remain split between improving as an athlete and continuing to develop and grow as a human.

“I can’t wait to go into my luge world [again] and get back into doing what I love best – and that’s becoming a better luge athlete and with that becoming a better person. Feeling comfortable in my own skin and competing at the highest level.”

Nathan Katz