This is part of Slate’s 2026 Olympics coverage. Read more here.
When it comes to general sex appeal, the Summer Olympics wins gold handily. The imagination is easily piqued by the sight of sweaty volleyballers and glistening swimmers; it has to work much harder on the bundled-up curlers and snowboarders of the Winter Games. There’s a reason why Heated Rivalry doesn’t feature much footage of the guys playing hockey.
But if we’re evaluating Olympic events on the criterion of whether competitors appear to be engaging in actual sex acts, you can’t do better than doubles luge.
The sport looks like what would happen if two countrymen were caught in flagrante spandex-clad delicto and thrown down an ice chute. To begin their run, one athlete lies on the base of the sled, and the other climbs on top, both facing up, essentially ass-to-groin. A PG-rated synopsis would say the teammates look as if they’re spooning. An R-rated version would call it something else. The lugers then push the sled back and forth in an unmistakable thrusting motion before sending themselves down the course. Much bumping and jostling ensues as they slip and slide to the finish line, where they sit up, one straddling the other from behind, and celebrate the fun they just had.
It’s an objectively bizarre idea for a sport. And because the teammates are paired off by gender, it is also dripping with gay vibes. For a prime example, look no further than two-time gold medalists Tobias Wendl and Tobias Arlt of Germany, a duo affectionately known by luge freaks as “the two Tobis.” (As someone whose queer friend group includes a married couple known as “the Sarahs,” I can confirm that “the two Tobis” is a deeply homosexual concept.) The men are reportedly heterosexual in their nonluge existences, but once they snuggle up on the sled, their lives—and limbs—are intimately intertwined.
In a TikTok posted by the International Luge Federation before the Milan Cortina Games, the Tobis, who have stacked their bodies together for more than two decades, gamely embrace the innuendo of their sport.
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The Tobi who takes the bottom position describes his job as “feeling it with the body.” Asked if he likes to be on top, Top Tobi says, with a grin, “Yes, of course. That’s why I do it.” Bottom Tobi says he likes his position too, though he hints that he might take a different role off the ice: “On the sled, I’m on the bottom.” I don’t know for sure that queer sex lingo maps directly from English to German, but the twinkle in the Tobis’ eyes tell me they know exactly what they’re hinting at.
Once you start viewing doubles luge through this lens, as I did during the broadcast from Cortina D’Ampezzo on Wednesday, it’s impossible to listen to the commentators without hearing everything as a euphemism.
“Beautiful laid-back position from the top man.”
“The bottom athlete actually spent most of the season single.”
“A little cleanup to do in the second round for the Italian duo.”
One of the announcers even referred to a pair of competitors in the women’s event as “the Chinese couple.” The word team was right there!
The erotic energy of luge life has occasionally been invoked for nobler purposes than sex jokes. In 2014, when the Olympic Games were in Russia—a nation that at the time was ramping up its persecution of LGBTQ+ people—a Canadian antidiscrimination group filmed a short public service announcement to support queer athletes. The video showed a luge duo pumping back and forth in slow motion before a run, to the tune of “Don’t You Want Me.” After several suggestive close-ups, on-screen text read, “The games have always been a little gay. Let’s fight to keep them that way.”
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Some American lugers who saw the video weren’t amused by the lighthearted take on their very serious sport, unable to abide the insinuation that there was anything remotely sexual about lying on top of another person and bouncing around. “They’re making fun of our sport for their cause and it doesn’t really make a lot of sense to me,” one athlete told the New York Times. Out-of-context luge footage is no more sexual than a slow-motion shot of him hugging his dad, he said. Another American expressed annoyance that doubles luge was often singled out for its prurient potential: “It’s never about football players taking a snap or whatever.”
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While football does produce its share of homoerotic moments, there’s no denying that the whole top-bottom thing adds an impressive level of double entendre to doubles luge. Women are competing in the event at the Olympics for the first time this year—lesbians are always an afterthought in queer representation!—including a pair of lugers from Canada, one of whom described the difficulty of learning the top position after years of riding on the bottom.
“On the bottom, you don’t see anything,” she said. “You just use your peripherals and you go off of the top person’s signal to move your shoulders. You put all the trust into the top person. And then the top person kind of has that role of, ‘I can see where I’m going, so I’m going to put us where I want to put us.’ ”
Come on!
I suppose the best argument for taking doubles luge seriously rather than sexually is that the luge’s “top man” or “top woman” rides in the position traditionally occupied by the sexual bottom, and vice versa. Where’s the fun in pedantry, though? More athletes, not just the Tobis, should be grateful for the association with queer lovemaking. Haven’t they heard? Sex, not sled, sells.
