Aileen Christina FRISCH

NATIONALITY SWITCH
Retired from luge after being left off the German team for the 2015/16 season. The Korean Luge Federation, and its newly-hired German coach Steffan Sartor, approached Frisch with an opportunity to compete through naturalisation, an offer she initially declined. "I didn’t feel Korean, I didn’t speak Korean. It sounded a little crazy.”

But as she began to miss travelling and competition in 2016, she started the process of obtaining Korean citizenship. In December 2016, she passed a final interview and began competing for the Republic of Korea within two weeks at the next World Cup event. (nytimes.com, 9 Feb 2018)

KOREAN NAME
Her Korean name “Ilwi Lim", chosen by an official in Korean, translates to "wins the first prize". (FIL Magazine, June 2017)

RETIREMENT
Plans to retire after the Beijing 2022 Olympic Winter Games after suffering from the aftereffects of a crash for the past three years. In 2019, she crashed into the wall in a training run in Oberhof, breaking both hands, her tailbone, and bones in her lower back. "During my career, I've had many, many crashes. The most important thing is to overcome the initial fear, and everything will be fine. I am more worried about my future after sport. This is something that's harder to deal with." (yna.co.kr, 25 Jan 2022; yna.co.kr, 4 Feb 2022)

© Data by Sports Data Warehouse

Her eighth-place result at the PyeongChang 2018 Olympic Winter Games is the highest placing for a Korean luge athlete, and the first top-10 finish (Park Jinyong and Cho Jung Myung finished ninth one day later, and the relay team also finished ninth).

Has one World Cup podium from January 2013, where she finished third at the Koenigssee singles, 0.013 seconds ahead of Alex Gough (CAN).

Won singles and team relay gold at the 2012 Junior World and European Championships, after finishing fourth and third respectively in singles the previous year. Added the U23 title in 2013, which doubled as her best World Championship result of fifth.