Elsa Desmond: Meet the NHS doctor about to become Ireland’s first Olympic luger

Born in Buckinghamshire to an Irish father, Desmond set up Ireland’s first luge federation while studying for a medical degree and has achieved her Olympic dream four years ahead of schedule

Elsa Desmond in training at Beijing’s National Sliding Centre (Reuters)

The story of a Snow Queen called Elsa who had a magical ability to manipulate ice was once deemed good enough for a Disney film. But Elsa Desmond’s perilous journey to Beijing makes Frozen look like gritty realism. After all, her Instagram handle is ‘Elsa_no_princess.’

What other genre for the tale of an NHS doctor who is Ireland’s first Olympic luger?

Born in Buckinghamshire to an Irish father – Brendan, who grew up in London – Desmond was an excellent young swimmer and hockey player.

Those sports didn’t do justice to her inner daredevil that was transfixed when watching TV coverage of luge at the 2006 Olympics in Turin.

“I liked the combination of speed, skill and power,” she said. “I was a nervous kid, but I saw the (luge) athletes, who looked so confident. I wanted to be like that.”

Desmond came across an advert for winter sports at a camp run by the British Army and there was her ticket to slide.

Initially part of the British team, a change of coaches and the realisation she could represent Ireland through her paternal grandparents led to a switch in allegiance.

“I’m a very persistent person when I want to be,” said Desmond, in the understatement of the century. “When I set my mind to something I am going to do it.”

There was only one problem: Ireland didn’t have a luge federation. The only solution was to set one up herself, forming a registered company and doing all the paperwork herself.

“It was a lot of work – I had no idea what it was going to be like,” she said. “90 percent of the work has been me, it has been a steep learning curve.”

Elsa Diamond is Ireland's women's single luge competitor (Getty)

Tough enough, without simultaneously trying to qualify as a doctor.

Desmond would write essays in the car travelling between races in Europe and read revision notes in the start hut before races.

She graduated last year and works in general surgery at Southend hospital – scrapping her initial plan to take a year out, answering the call to work on the Covid frontline.

The hospital have given Desmond four months off to pursue her luge career and she was rewarded with qualification for the Games ahead of schedule; 2026 was her initial target.

The goal of becoming an Olympian had a magical hold over her motivation, even spontaneously travelling to PyeongChang 2018 to get a taste of what it might be like.

“I think as a kid I saw the Olympics as such a beautiful thing,” she says. “People coming from all around the world and you’re uniting everyone from every background and there’s all these cultures and they’re all in this one place for this one thing that they love which is sport. And I think from a young age I just never let go of that.”

So Elsa is safely in Beijing and carried Ireland’s flag at the Opening Ceremony, managing not to cry while doing so, as she warned she might.

The new Olympic motto is ‘Faster, Higher, Stronger, Together,’ with the fourth word added last year, no doubt at the whim of a branding guru in Lausanne.

But Desmond, like so many others before her, has done it on her own. And that sums up the Olympic spirit better than any word could.

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