LAKE PLACID — As this village awaits word on whether it’ll be picked as the Olympic sliding site for the 2026 Games, Ray Brook native Sophia Kirkby spent time in Italy checking out the nearly completed rebuild of the historic Eugenio Monti track in Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy.

Kirkby, a women’s doubles for the USA Luge national team, was one of about 60 international luge, bobsled and skeleton athletes to test out the new track from March 25 to 29. The track is expected to be used for the upcoming Olympic Winter Games in Milano-Cortina, Italy.

She returned home about a week or so ago and said the track is still a construction site, but she believes the Italian track has a lot of promising achievements ahead.

“I believe Fabio (Saldini), the director and coordinator of the track, his company is doing a great job of excellence and providing some of the best modern technology with a crew,” Kirkby said. “They have a good chance of pulling it off. A brand-new track within a year. It’s never been done before.”

In total, there were 18 luge athletes from nine nations who completed about 180 runs on the 1,730-meter-long track with 16 curves. Kirkby and her doubles luge partner Chevonne Forgan, who are coming off a third-place overall finish in the FIL World Cup standings, took their own runs. USA Luge head coach Lubomir Mick was also in Italy. Kirkby said everyone who tested out the track stayed in a hotel a little bit out of town and was bussed into the venue.

For Kirkby, who has competed on numerous tracks around the world, she said that every track in the world is different, and a lot of that depends on the architect. This one, she said, used different forms of technology to draw up the plans for it.

“We have AI, and we have a bunch of data simulators. They were able to make this to a ‘T,'” Kirkby said. “They were able to have blueprints, which they changed. Their original blueprints, they said, they changed 31 times before they had what they had, and presented it with us now. They’re going to make a few more changes that we suggested to the track so that it will be OK for the Olympic year. Because they had great technology and simulators but they don’t know what luge can put down. But that track was cool.”

Kirkby said what’s cool about the track is that all of the curves are named after the surrounding mountains in Cortina, which are about double the size of those here.

“They’ve been very stern about it, that you better learn the curve names and not the numbers,” she said. “They say they are getting rid of the numbers next year.”

Kirkby admitted that she was a little nervous about testing out a brand-new track, but those nerves kind of went away after capping off the World Cup season on two tracks — Pyeongchang and Beijing — that she’d never competed on before.

The Cortina track is not 100% completed, and might not be before February’s Games. Lake Placid is the Plan B option if things fall apart. But Kirkby said the Italian Olympic organizers really want to host the sliding events.

“I hope that they do have it, but my track is ready and on standby,” she said. “But if we’re in Italy, it’s different, you’d have all the events that are happening. It would be just so interesting.”

While Kirkby has not been officially named an Olympian, as the athletes will use this upcoming season to qualify for the Games, she has a high chance to go, especially after her results last season, and with two qualifying races in the U.S. — here and Park City, Utah.

But even Kirkby doesn’t know what will happen next. She said her family is still trying to figure everything out.

“I think they’re going to have to stay an hour south of the Cortina location,” she said. “But it’s Europe, so they should have a great bussing system from the town to the Olympic venues.”

With the Olympics looming, Kirkby said prices to stay in Cortina are extremely expensive. She said a freind of a friend tried to book a house for seven days, and it wasn’t cheap.

“It was 40,000 euros for seven days,” she said. “That was the cheapest she could find. That is an arm and a leg to me, maybe even two kidneys.”

Kirkby was excited about the possibility of competing at the Olympics, but noted that since it’s Milano-Cortina rather than just one city, they would be hours away from some of the other Olympic athletes.

She said that since women’s doubles in one of the first sliding events to kick off the Olympics, she probably won’t make it to the Opening Ceremony.

“It would take over 14 hours (by train) to get from the Olympic Ceremony to my location, where I’m staying,” she said. “So that’s the reason why, unless I had a friend who has a helicopter, which I’m working on. That would be a lot easier to go through the (Dolomite) Alps.”