The 15-year-old Logan Park High School pupil is one of three New Zealanders selected for the country's first women's luge team, which is competing in World Cup events in Italy, Germany and Austria during December and January.
Tayla won the individual junior women's division at the Austrian Cup in Judenburg on Sunday and her call home to tell her Dunedin parents the news was animated.
''She's very excited by it,'' her mother, Karen, said yesterday.
''It's given her real confidence to carry on and show them what New Zealand has to offer.
''She's having the time of her life. She's blown away by how different the sport, scenery and the culture is over there.''
Mrs Ward said she had been ''a bit apprehensive'' about her daughter being on the other side of the world - especially during the festive season - but now she was excited and proud.
It is rare for New Zealanders to compete in luging on a world stage, purely because there is only one luging facility in the southern hemisphere.
Tayla has said in previous interviews the reason she got into the sport was because the only facility in the southern hemisphere was built in Naseby by her grandfather Raye Ward.
Since taking up the sport, she has won the New Zealand (Open) Luge Cup and has been first and second in the Naseby Cup (women's under-15).
Tayla's next event is in Italy on January 2-4.
She has several more events to compete in in Europe before she returns to Dunedin to start school again in February next year.
