For those not lucky enough to be eating borscht in Sochi, we snagged a member of the local real estate community with his own Olympic tale. Kinzie Real Estate Group EVP and managing broker Steven Maher was on the US Olympics luge team at the ’88 Calgary games.
How the heck do you become a luger?
Steven (snapped on Curve 8, the Kreisel, at the Olympics) graduated from New Trier and attended U of I with a gymnastics scholarship, ending his competitive career after graduating in ’85. Through a defense contractor job California, he met some Stanford students that competed on the US luge team. The international federation was about to put on a beginners camp in Lake Placid, NY for countries new to the sport (South Korea, Japan, Ireland, etc.), and Steven was one of 10 beginners in the regional luge club invited to attend. “I never felt quite like I had achieved the kind of success I wanted to athletically,” Steven recalls, “I had this itch.” He fell in love with the sport after 10 days at the Olympic training center.
Road to the top
He’d go on to spend the next six years working his way up the international competitive circuit. Steven (left) earned rookie of the year and made the Olympic team his second year (with doubles partner Joe Barile). The spacial awareness, strength, and mental imagery from gymnastics were a big help, Steven says, especially in a subtle sport like luge where you could be going 90 mph and win or lose by thousandths of a second. “People think we’re daredevils,” he tells us, “But there’s a science and discipline to it.” Calgary was indescribable, he says (he and his partner placed 16th), with athletes from every sport in a single venue creating unbridled electricity, emotion, and national pride.
From racing to real estate
Steven and Joe competed for another five years (clinching the '88 Olympic trials and national championships, above), and they both had real estate in their bones. Joe was a developer in Upstate New York, and Steven worked for a homebuilder during school. After helping Joe on some projects in Lake Placid, Steven took an HVAC job in Chicago with luge sponsor York International. Several real estate marketing stints led him to Kinzie, where lately he’s focused on bringing distressed developments back to life for banks and private equity firms. His team's sale of 56 of 76 condo units in Burr Ridge Village Center last year is a strong indication that the market’s coming back for fundamentally sound projects, he says.
Luge lives on
Being a competitive athlete lent itself to his 25-year real estate career, Steven says. It helps him understand the big picture, set small goals to achieve a larger one, and persevere through the inevitable highs and lows. Steven was involved with the US Luge Association for a while and was an athlete advisor to the US Olympic Committee, but these days he’s just thrilled to be watching such a great team compete in Sochi. His wife and four kids (above) lose him for two weeks whenever the Olympics come around (summer or winter), he jokes.
