Austin Florian’s father was a ski racer, so he started skiing when he was 2 years old.
Austin was also a ski racer, starting as a youngster at Mount Southington, then in college at Clarkson University, where he was a two-time All-American. He played lacrosse and golf at Southington High. When he had a bad day at a golf tryout in his senior year, he decided to run track.
This athletic path led him circuitously to where he is now: On the threshold of going to his first Olympics.
But it’s not for any of the aforementioned sports. It’s for skeleton, in which the athlete goes stomach-down, headfirst on a sled down an iced track.
Florian, an engineer who lives in Southington with his wife Erica, was in St. Moritz, Switzerland, last week competing in two World Cups. He finished 10th in both and is the top-ranked U.S. skeleton racer. After one more World Cup competition this weekend in Altenburg, Germany, the U.S. skeleton team will be announced on Monday.
“It’s looking pretty good at the moment,” Florian said last week from from Switzerland. “But nothing confirmed yet.”
The Milano Cortina Olympics will take place in Italy Feb. 6-22.
Florian, 31, initially tried skeleton in the fall of 2014 because it looked like fun. Clarkson is close to Lake Placid, where the bobsled and skeleton track is, and Florian saw a flyer for open tryouts one day. Once he did it, he was hooked, although he did have to convince his college ski coach it would be OK.
After he graduated from Clarkson in 2016, Florian started doing skeleton full-time. His first international race was in 2016; his first World Cup season was 2018-19. In 2022, he was the No. 1 U.S. skeleton athlete, but he didn’t have a good World Cup season and did not make the Olympic team that year.
He didn’t give up, though.
“I wasn’t going to stop either way,” he said. “I wanted to get better. The season after I didn’t make the Games, I had my best season ever.”
Last year in Lake Placid, Florian and Mystique Ro won the world championship for the mixed team relay, in which a male and female skeleton racer compete separately and their times are added together. Florian also finished sixth individually at the World Championships.
At a December World Cup in Norway, Florian and Ro were the silver medalists.
“It’s the first year (mixed team relay) is in the Olympics and we have a good chance at a medal,” Florian said.
As with the singles athletes, the U.S. mixed relay team hasn’t been officially named yet.
Florian competes from October to March, traveling to Lake Placid and Europe. He and his wife Erica, who is a physical therapist, were married in 2024 and bought a house in Southington.
Since Erica is a former Division I soccer player, she understands Florian’s drive to compete, he said. The two got to spend Christmas together in Austria.
“It’s a long season, for sure, in that sense,” Florian said. But he said he doesn’t have plans to stop, even after the Olympics.
“I’ll probably plan to keep going a little bit,” he said.