Chris Thorpe, Gordy Sheer

Luge

They remember the Germans laughing. Or so it seemed to them. Who wouldn’t laugh, they figured, they were so bad.

The Germans intimidated Chris Thorpe.

“They destroyed us,” he said.

Gordy Sheer closed his eyes.

“They destroyed us,” he said.

They got better, though, Sheer and Thorpe. They got better together, as a doubles luge team. They went from one kid who tried luge on a lark and another who got the U.S.

team’s number off the side of a van, all the way to a World Cup title in 1996.

They went from 12th in the 1992 Olympics to fifth in 1994 to a silver medal at the Spiral.

They went from a joke 10 years ago to within four-hundredths of a second from gold Thursday.

Just the Germans and them, 1-2.

Stefan Krausse and Jan Behrendt still beat them, but the silver medal of Sheer and Thorpe and the bronze of teammates Mark Grimmette and Brian Martin gave the United States its first medals in 34 years of Olympic luge competition.

“We broke the barrier, I guess,” Sheer said, head bobbing, seemingly still unconvinced. “We’ve still gotta get the gold. But that’s somebody else’s job, I guess.”

They aren’t sure what is possible for them, perhaps because they can’t believe they’ve come this far. Maybe it is far enough. Sheer’s mother has a $100 bet that her 26-year-old son retires and goes back to Ohio State. He won’t say.

Sheer and Thorpe have ridden together 10 years, ever since a coach paired them in juniors. Thorpe says they could go longer, maybe as long as Krausse and Behrendt, who have been through four World Championships and three World Cup titles and 16 years in the sled together.

But it is difficult to imagine amassing a record like that. Even their World Cup title last year, the first won by anyone other than Europeans, and a World Cup title this season by Grimmette and Martin hadn’t convinced them of the possibilities.

No matter what they’d done on the World Cup circuit, the Americans hadn’t won anything in the Olympics. Going into the Games, Thorpe called it “the last thing for us to do.

“We just want some respect.”

And now, after two medals?

“I feel the whole weight of the Rocky Mountains is off my shoulders,” U.S. head coach Wolfgang Schadler said.