Curling looks different for Larry Sidney now. At Lake Tahoe Epic Curling in Stateline, the South Shore financial adviser and athlete remains standing and uses a stick to push the rock down the ice rather than gliding on his knee after a life-changing lower leg amputation this past spring. But the altered technique doesn’t bother Sidney — he’s just happy to be back on the ice.
The pace of the curling match is a stark contrast to the other sport that captivated Sidney for years and nearly sent him to the Olympics — skeleton racing. In skeleton, athletes slide headfirst down a frozen, winding track on a small sled, reaching speeds upwards of 80 mph.
Whether gliding across the ice with a rock or plummeting around frozen curves on a sled, Sidney credits his journey as an athlete for giving him the resiliency and grit to persevere through all of life’s challenges.
NEED FOR SPEED
The first time Sidney stared down the skeleton racing course at Utah Olympic Park in Park City, Utah — the nearly mile-long ice track with 15 turns and 340 feet of vertical drop built for the 2002 Winter Olympics — he thought about bailing.
An avid skier, athlete and teacher, Sidney found himself doing a weeklong “driving school” for skeleton thanks to his brother, Ray, who also lured his brother from the East Coast to Lake Tahoe in 2012 to work on the winter Olympic bid for Reno-Tahoe and got him hooked on curling.
“My brother went down the track right before me and it was my turn next. Once he was at the bottom, there’s a little bit of family competitiveness so there was no way I could bail on it. I had to do it,” recalls Sidney. “I went down, and at the bottom of that first run, my mouth and throat were just parched. My eyes were bugged out. But once I got off the sled and had a minute, it was like, when do I get to do this again? That’s how it gets you.”
Though Sidney is terrified of heights and would “never in a million years” do something like bungee jump, he couldn’t get enough of the high-speeds and razor focus required in skeleton. The brothers did another driving school in Lake Placid and subsequent trips to Whistler and Calgary to try new tracks.
“I ended up doing a combine to qualify for the U.S. skeleton program, and I scored high enough to get into their elite developmental program,” says Sidney. “As soon as I finished business school in 2014, I moved out to Park City so I could spend the rest of the season training in the program. That got me started.”
TEAM ISRAEL
Prior to training with the U.S. for skeleton, Sidney — who has dual citizenship — tried out and made the cut for Israel’s mixed curling team and competed in the World Championship. This connection ultimately led Sidney to move to Israel’s skeleton team in 2015, competing around the world for the next three years and training for the 2018 Winter Olympics at Pyeongchang, South Korea.
“There were four Israeli men all competing for the country. Our best case scenario is that one of us would get a spot in the Olympics,” says Sidney. “It had never happened before for Israel, and we were on the edge of being good enough to qualify. Just as much as we were teammates and wanting success for one another, we were also our fiercest competitors for each other.”
One teammate was injured and couldn’t finish the season, but the remaining three all achieved a qualifying standard. However, based on the rules of Israel’s federation, the athlete with the highest ranking in the world would go to the Olympics. Sidney’s teammate, Adam Edelman, earned that spot, and Sidney headed to Pyeongchang as an alternate and coach. Edelman came in 28th out of 30 competitors.
“The athletes that you’re competing against are mostly from countries like Russia, the U.S., Canada and Germany that have big programs, big budgets and lots of coaches. They get the best athletes from their countries whereas Israel’s program is all self-funded,” Sidney notes. “The athletes are paying their own bills. If you’re getting coached it’s because you’re paying out of pocket to hire a coach. It’s a very, very hard situation to take that on and compete with these athletes for these other nations.”
NEXT CHAPTER
After Pyeongchang, Sidney decided to retire from skeleton. With a wife and two young kids back in Tahoe, traveling for 5 months a year for skeleton was tough. But Sidney wasn’t ready to get off the ice just yet.
Back in 2013, Sidney, his brother and a group of fellow curling enthusiasts formed a club, Lake Tahoe Epic Curling, and built a community over the next six years at the South Lake Tahoe Ice Arena. In 2019, they built a dedicated two-sheet curling club in Stateline.
Curling remained a big part of Sidney’s life, even during skeleton, so when he became available after retiring from the sliding sport, Sidney was asked to join Israel’s men’s curling team.
“Four times now since then I’ve competed for the men’s national team in the European Championships,” adds Sidney.
But in the fall of 2024, as Sidney was preparing to curl in the European Championships, doctors discovered a large tumor in his leg.
“I ended up able to go curl with Israel, but upon my return had to have more testing done, and, ultimately, in order to have the tumor removed, the best option was to have the lower part of my leg amputated,” Sidney explains.
Deciding to move forward with the amputation was the hardest decision of his life. He credits the mindset and lessons he learned through sports for helping him through this difficult period.
“You build skills. You build resiliency. The greatest curlers in the world miss shots and lose games. The ability to do that and then a minute later, get up into the hack and take your next shot and make that a successful shot, that kind of resiliency plays out everywhere. I really hope my kids are learning that. It’s helped me so much in recovering from this surgery,” Sidney says.
Today, Sidney is curling again. This winter he hopes to be on skis with his kids, and eventually get back into biking and running. He has already looked into the Paralympics. He finds joy in his family life, coaching youth curling, and advising his finance clients — including a growing segment of professional and Olympic athletes.
“There are challenges now that I didn’t have before, but there are things about it that are great and I’m optimistic about,” he says. “That kind of resiliency, without all of the sports and getting knocked down 100 times and getting up 100 times, I don’t know if I would have been able to do that.”