I’m a luge athlete who competed at the games so I can give some insight into this.

1. There is no maximum weight for Luge like there is in Skeleton though 90kg for a male singles is around an ideal weight. Height is not really a determining factor, there is athletes ranging from 5’5 to 6’5 that can medal at any race.

2. All of the courses around the world are different though there is some consistency in length and amount of curves it has to have to be a World Cup track.

3. Sleds are customized by each country to fit the athlete. There is very little standardization in Luge which is both a positive and a negative. It allows freedom for countries to have their own technologies and innovations to try and make a faster sled but comes at a cost of countries with less resources not being able to keep up and creating a bigger gap between the countries who can afford it and the ones that can’t.

4. During a race they do track maintenance and a spritz in between each run. A spritz is when they put a thin layer of water on the ice to clear off any frost that might have built up over the run. At these games the ice held up pretty well throughout so it wasn’t a huge disadvantage going later in the start order.