Connecticut skeleton sledder Austin Florian getting second opportunity at Olympic dream in Milan

When Southington's Austin Florian ventured into skeleton competition midway through college after a family visit to the former Lake Placid, N.Y. Olympic site, it was simply to have fun. He had no intentions of doing it long-term, because he learned as a young competitive ski racer that an open mind can protect an athlete from the pain of failing to fulfill Olympic dreams.

But with each new level of success attained by sprinting on ice and sledding down mountains face first under intense G forces, Florian enjoyed himself more, became excited and couldn't help but commit himself to the idea that competing in the Olympics was becoming increasingly possible.

Ultimately, that hope set him up for one of the greatest disappointments of his life. After dedicating himself through intense work and sacrifices to the challenge of making the 2022 Olympic team, he came up short.

"It was definitely tough," said Florian. "It was probably one of the hardest things I have gone through in the sport and in my life. It was so difficult, because it is hard to put so much into something and come up short. It was a lot of me not performing as well as I could have, but also some bad luck that really didn't side with me.

"Getting over that, growing and then that next season having the best season I ever had by far was huge for me. I grew not only as an athlete but as a person, too, and that allowed me to be where I am now."

Now, 12 years into his training in the sport that requires equal amounts of tremendous fitness, courage, strength and body control, Florian is in Italy as the reigning world champion in mixed team skeleton racing awaiting the start of his events at the Milan Cortina Olympics.

"I'm happy with how I was able to work with my sports psychologist and just grow and be better," said Florian, who starts competition in men's singles skeleton Thursday (3:30 a.m. EST). "I still work with that sports psych today, and he is probably one the biggest members of my team. I am thankful every day for everything he has done.

"My wife, my family and everyone on my team has always been there for me. That is the biggest thing in a sport at this level. If you don't have a support system, you don't have anything."

The sport requires so much support as well as mental and physical training, because often winners and medalists can be separated by hundredths of a second over a course almost a mile long.

At the top of the course, athletes bend down to grab hold of their sled with one hand, sprint as fast as they can and then dive onto the sled for a face-first ride of slightly less than a minute down the mountain.

The Olympic ice track in Cortina is 1,445 meters (9/10 of a mile), and during the World Cup event there in November racers reached speeds of up to 87 miles per hour and G forces of up to 5Gs pushing down on them through the most challenging of the course's 16 curves.  

There are no steering or braking mechanisms on the sleds. Athletes tuck their arms at their sides to create the best aerodynamics for themselves and steer with subtle movements of their neck, shoulders, knees and toes.

"Sometimes people try it, and they find it to be terrifying, and they never get over that feeling," Florian said. "They are never going to continue in the sport. It can be very intimidating sometimes. Every once in a while, you will get to a new track and be like, ‘This is going to be scary,' but you have to find the fun and joy in going fast, and I do really enjoy going fast."

He's gone as fast as 90 miles per hour at the track in Whistler, Canada.

He even had a big crash during a World Cup event in Altenberg, Germany a few years ago, but even that didn't scare him away from the sport.

"I was going 70 miles per hour, and I basically flipped and hit my back and the back of my head on the wall," Florian said. "Going that fast, it was pretty bad. It shattered the helmet, and I got a big gash on my forehead, but other than a few stitches and some bloody gloves and shoes, I was fine.

"The first time I went back after that it was definitely scary, but then I realized it was just a mistake. It still is one of my favorite tracks, and it is probably my favorite European track. I do love it, and I have had some great results there since that crash."

His wife Erica was watching live the day of the crash and said she was very scared in that moment.

"It was a big enough crash that the camera wasn't on him at the end," she said. "I was freaking out, because it was very, very scary. There was a brief time after that when I would get a little bit nervous during events, but now watching him I don't feel any fear at all. He's really good at this and knows what he is doing."

He's been a bit of a daredevil who has appreciated the thrill of going down mountains as fast as possible since he was a kid.

His father, Sean, was one of the best Master's skiers in the country when Florian was 4-5 years old, and he used to forerun down the mountains before his father's events. He got hooked on speed and competition, and by the time he was 6, he told his dad he was going to compete in the Olympics.

"I grew up ski racing, so I grew up in an Olympic-centric sport," Florian said. "Obviously, at a certain age you kind of know you are not going to go. I think by the time I was in middle school, I knew I wasn't going to make it to the Olympics as a skier. I just wasn't at that level.

"So, my goals shifted, and I ended up wanting to ski in college. I accomplished that (as a two-time All-American at Clarkson University) and had a great time. Then I just fell upon this sport and decided to give it a go, because it was a lot of fun. I had no intentions of doing it long-term, but I ended up being pretty OK at it, stuck around, and here I am."

He's not just OK. He's the No. 1-ranked American in skeleton racing. He finished 13^th individually and 3^rd in mixed team during the 2025-26 World Cup season. He also won the 2025 mixed team world championship with his teammate Mystique Ro.

His junior and senior years of college while he was still competing in ski racing, he would drive an hour and a half to Lake Placid to practice sledding. He got good enough to compete in two skeleton national championships as well as a couple of international races, and then he qualified for national team trials right after he graduated.

That led to him competing for two years of North American Cup and ultimately qualifying for World Cup after that.

"I think my Olympic dream was kind of reborn a little bit while I was in college as I started getting good in skeleton, but then it became a little more serious when I made the World Cup. That's when I really said, ‘Oh wow, I can do this.'   

"I figured I might as well give it a try right after school, because I was never going to get another opportunity like this in my life."

He has competed in World Cup for eight years now and has pretty much been the best American since failing to make the Olympics in 2022 when Andrew Blaser beat him out.  

He said that as devastating as that was to not compete in the 2022 Olympics, he never once considered quitting the sport and going to work fulltime as an engineer.

"Absolutely not, I never considered quitting," Florian said. "That's not how I operate. If I didn't make the team and I was toward the end of where I wanted to be or I was at the end of my ability, then that would be it. But I wasn't anywhere near the end of my ability, and I have shown that over the last few years. I've done nothing but get better."

During the 2022-23 World Cup season after missing the Olympics, he had his career-best fourth-place finish as an individual and finished eighth overall in the world that year.

"What I am most proud of is the way he carried himself this season, because he easily could have let the fear of what happened four years ago happen again," Erica Florian said. "You have seen that happen to so many people. But he didn't allow it. He went through it and remained confident in what he could do.

"He didn't let doubts creep in. He worked his butt off. That was really hard. I am a sports physical therapist, and I am a big supporter of sports psychology, and that was part of it. We found an amazing person for him to work with that helped him a lot on the mental aspect, and then physically he just worked even harder."

Florian said the biggest thrill of his career to date was winning the mixed team world championship last year.

"It was pretty amazing," he said. "It was the highlight of my career so far. I was so happy to win it and so happy that I had so many family members and friends there. Bringing that into an Olympic year is pretty cool and special. For sure it gives me confidence going in."

He believes he has an outside chance to medal in the individual event in Cortina (Feb. 12-13) and believes he has a very good chance of medaling in the mixed team event (Feb. 15).

Whether he medals or not in these Olympics, he said he hasn't made up his mind if he will pursue another Olympics after this year.

"We are going day-by-day," Florian said. "I have no answer on that. It is something we will figure out afterward. We are only partially funded through the USOC and our federation to kind of pay for some things in the sport, but extra equipment and life in general isn't paid for.

"I have to work fulltime to support that, so I will have to figure out where I go from here. The company I work for, Kamatics, has been amazing in terms of hiring me back every year, but I have to figure out where I go from here.

"It's been pretty amazing and pretty fun up to this point. There were definitely a lot of sacrifices. I missed a lot of things with family and friends that made it hard, but at the same time making it to these Olympics has made it all worth it. I'm just going to enjoy it and figure out the future later."

This article originally published at Connecticut skeleton sledder Austin Florian getting second opportunity at Olympic dream in Milan.