(2 of 2)
Less imaginative people might have urged him to dedicate his talents to basketball or football. But at 14, Robert Pipkins was already enamored of gymnastics and swimming. That was uncommon enough for a New York City youth, but after his mother brought home a flyer about tryouts for the junior national luge team, Pipkins decided to travel to Lake Placid and give it a try. He immediately loved the luge for the "exciting and risky" way the tiny sled carries one man at high speed. In January, after only three months of top-level training, Pipkins, 18, became a member of the U.S. Olympic luge team. Two weeks later, he slid to the junior world championship in Sapporo, Japan. An engineering major at Drexel University, Pipkins is the first black ever to compete on the international luge circuit, a fact he appreciates but does not dwell on. "It just means people of any race can do any sport," he says. He is more interested in becoming the first American to win a luge medal.