WORCESTER — As the USA Luge team competes at the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing this week, the athletes will be sporting a connection to Worcester through a partnership with manufacturer Norton Saint-Gobain that goes back more than 40 years.
Worcester-based Norton Abrasives sponsors the USA Luge team, collaborating on technical aspects of the team’s sleds and getting the athletes from event to event every year.
The relationship between Norton Saint-Gobain and the USA Luge team began in 1979, when the team’s volunteer marketing committee reached out to Norton asking for sandpaper to polish their runners, the main steering mechanism of the sled made of steel.
“Reducing friction is very important in our sport, and the runners that come in contact with the ice need to be very highly polished and smooth,” Gordy Sheer, director of marketing and sponsorship for USA Luge, said.
As the team’s main sponsor, the company gets the team to each event in which it competes, from eight World Cup events each year to the Winter Olympics every four years.
On the technical front, Norton provides technical expertise and engineering advice and collaboration on the sleds.
“What started the relationship is supplying us with a lot of consumer products that are important to us to not only finish our runners but also the sleds themselves and get them ready to be painted,” Sheer said. “They paint all our sleds, and we’ve got a lot. It’s a huge sponsorship for us — it’s our biggest.”
Norton Saint-Gobain based in city
Founded in Worcester in 1885, Norton Abrasives is one of the world’s largest manufacturer and supplier of abrasives for commercial applications, household and automotive refinishing usage.
Norton Abrasives’ headquarters is still based in Worcester, with about 1,000 employees on its campus, according to Norton Saint-Gobain public relations and philanthropy manager Brenda Heller.
“Working with the Olympic team has been a culmination throughout the years,” Heller said. “Our technical expertise team is able to work with them all throughout the year, and then being able to see our products in action and what has been done with the team is just an incredible experience.”
Norton also has a research and development center in Northborough, and 10 other abrasives sites around the U.S., plus one in Canada and one in Mexico.
As the team’s primary sponsor since 2009, Norton usually donates to the families of the athletes to help send them to the Olympics to watch the games. However, with strict rules at this year’s Olympics, no fans, family or sponsors are allowed at the events.
Lake Placid watch party
In lieu of attending the games, Norton Saint-Gobain has invited its employees, the athletes’ families and members of the luge team to a weeklong watch party at Lake Placid, New York, where USA Luge is based.
“It’s a big deal to be able to bring something like this together as a partnership and have it evolve,” Heller said. “The USA Luge folks are one of a kind, and we feel like we’re a family at this point. It’s awesome, and we’re so appreciative of the partnership and the legacy.”
Sheer, a former Olympian himself, said this is the first time since 1992 he hasn’t attended the Olympics, but he’s remaining cheerful.
“We’ve never seen anything like it, but the next best thing is to have families and sponsors here in Lake Placid to watch together,” he said.
While Norton does not usually attend the Olympics, its partnership with USA Luge brings 40 to 80 Norton employees to Lake Placid to watch the luge team participate in the World Cup.
Heller said employees from Norton interact with the athletes and watch the action on the ice, finally able to see their engineering on the sleds in person.
Norton has found ways to bring the USA Luge team to Worcester over the years. It holds an annual recruiting event at Wachusett Mountain where the luge team carves a makeshift track in the snow, inviting kids of different ages to try luge.
When USA Luge athlete Chris Mazdzer won the first silver for the U.S. in men’s single’s luge in the 2018 Olympics, Norton brought him to Worcester to show him its campus and introduce him to employees in the abrasives unit.
“When we get an Olympic athlete we want to share them and the love for the sport,” Heller said with a laugh. “Hopefully we’ll have one or more Olympians we can bring back to Worcester this year.”
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