Luge at the Olympics

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American luge rider Julia Clukey at the 2010 Olympic Winter Games

Luge has beenpart of the program of the Olympic Winter Games since the 1964 Winter Olympics . Since then, up to 2010, three toboggan competitions - singles for men, women and doubles - have been held at 13 Olympic Games. In 2014, a fourth competition was added with the team relay. So far, only men have competed in doubles at the Olympic Games, although the regulations do not exclude women from this competition.

The first unsuccessful efforts to include tobogganing in the Olympic program were made in the 1930s. The International Olympic Committee approved such a request in 1954, and ten years later the discipline was Olympic for the first time. In the early years, several difficulties arose, such as the sport's susceptibility to weather and the associated frequent postponements. This problem was solved when the 1976 Olympic toboggan competitions could take place on artificial ice for the first time. Another characteristic of the early years were experiments with new techniques and with the material, which, however, became more and more precise in the course of time. In terms of sport, the GDR team (until 1988) or the all-German team (from 1992) formed the strongest team in almost all games: In total, German athletes had won 33 of the 47 competitions and 80 of the 138 medals awarded by 2018.

An overview of all medal winners as well as a precise statistical breakdown of the results can be found in the list of Olympic champions in luge .

Competitions at Winter Olympics

competition 64 68 72 76 80 84 88 92 94 98 02 06 10 14th 18th total
Single seaters (men) • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • 15th
Single seaters (women) • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • 15th
Two-seater • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • 15th
Team relay • • 2
total 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 4th 4th 47

Note: So far, only men have started in the doubles, although women are also allowed to start according to the regulations.

Regulations

Logo of the Fédération Internationale de Luge de Course (FIL)

The luge competitions at the Olympic Winter Games are organized by the international luge umbrella organization, the Fédération Internationale de Luge de Course (FIL). Therefore, the International Luge Regulations (IRO) also apply to the Olympics as to all FIL competitions . Among other things, this stipulates the number of eligible athletes in a country - three athletes each in the single-seater competitions and two pairs in the double-seater; The 77-page document also regulates the basic structure of a luge sled and the use of additional weights. In addition to these general provisions, there are special Olympic rules that are valid in addition to the IRO at Winter Olympic Games. These Olympic rules determine, for example, the starting order, which changes in each run. While in the first two rounds of the single-seater competitions (or in the first round of the two-seater race) it is based on the start numbers, in the third round the best-placed starts the competition and the last-placed starts at the end. In the final round, this order is reversed again, so that the tobogganers furthest ahead finish the race. The National Olympic Committees are responsible for nominating the participants ; However, these may only appoint athletes who are generally admitted to FIL competitions. This means that only tobogganers who have completed a luge school and who have reached a predetermined time limit in training can take part in the Olympic Games.

In addition, the FIL declares that it itself - and not the respective organizing committee - is the supreme body of the Olympic competitions. Therefore, all program proposals by the organizers must be approved by the FIL; the organizers are also obliged to implement changes requested by the FIL.

Historical development

The way to the Olympic premiere (until 1964)

International Olympic Committee (IOC) logo

The first international toboggan competition took place in Switzerland in 1883. In the decades that followed, tobogganing developed from a sport originally limited to the Alpine countries to an internationally recognized discipline with its own national associations. The first European championships , held in 1914, were followed about ten years later by the establishment of the Fédération Internationale de Bobsleigh et de Tobogganing (FIBT), which was also responsible for tobogganing for several decades. As early as the early 1930s, the first national associations put forward the requirement that tobogganing - like bobsleigh and skeleton - be included in the Olympic program. The tobogganing section of the FIBT submitted the first application to the International Olympic Committee (IOC) with this concern in February 1935. Since there was only one year left before the next Olympic Games , the IOC assembly declined the request for short-term admission. With the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939, which brought both international tobogganing and the regular staging of the Olympic Games to a standstill, the entire concern was initially obsolete.

After the European Championships had been held again since 1951, at the beginning of the 1950s some toboggan officials took up the idea of ​​applying to the IOC to include the sport in the Olympic program. Before this request could be officially presented to the IOC session, the actual decision-making body, it had to go through various instances. First, the leaders of six national associations - including the former European champions Paul Aste for Austria and Rudolf Maschke for Germany - signed a letter to the FIBT congress in January 1952, which emphasized the popularity and widespread use of the discipline. Since the toboggan sport did not yet have its own umbrella organization at that time, all applications to the IOC had to be forwarded via the FIBT. A short time later, its president presented the matter to a sub-commission of the IOC, which accepted the proposal and announced that it would be presented to the IOC meeting in Athens in May 1954 . In the two years between the submission of the application and the decision, representatives of the committee observed tobogganing events several times (such as the continental competitions in Garmisch in 1952 ) and were then mostly convinced of the sport.

On May 13, 1954, the IOC decided at its 50th session that tobogganing should replace skeleton in the program of the Winter Olympics. The latter had been Olympic at the games in St. Moritz in 1928 and 1948 , the city that, with the Cresta sport, was the "Mecca" and center of the sport. However, only 10 and 15 athletes took part in the competitions. However, the meeting did not yet regulate when the sport of tobogganing should celebrate its Olympic premiere. Since Innsbruck was initially the favorite for hosting the 1960 Winter Olympics and Austria was one of the most successful tobogganing nations during this time, the plan was to make the discipline debut at these games. However, when the 1960 Winter Games were surprisingly awarded to the US American Squaw Valley in May 1955 , the organizers there decided not to build a bobsleigh and toboggan run because there were not enough participants. Thus the Olympic premiere of luge postponed for at least four more years.

During this time the sport developed considerably. In January 1954, four months before the Olympic meeting in Athens, the members of the FIBT luge section decided to break away from the bobsleigh association and set up their own umbrella organization. It took more than three years to achieve this goal with the establishment of the Fédération Internationale de Luge de Course (FIL). The office of the first FIL President was taken over by the Austrian Bert Isatitsch , who had previously headed the toboggan section within the FIBT. In the opinion of many observers, Isatitsch became the formative man of luge in the following 30 years, whose merits lay particularly in establishing the sport as an Olympic sport. In 1955, as a further step towards internationalization, the first world championships took place, but only Europeans competed, although the United States and Canada had already joined the luge section shortly before. After the FIL was finally recognized by the IOC as an independent umbrella organization at the IOC meeting in Sofia in September 1957, Isatitsch was able to represent the interests of the sport himself at the next meeting of the committee in 1959 in Munich. There the delegates awarded the 1964 Winter Olympics to Innsbruck in a clear vote; at the same time, they established luge as an Olympic discipline for these games. The program was presented at the 1961 meeting: Olympic tobogganing was to be carried out in the three competitions that had already proven themselves at World and European Championships - in the singles for men and women and in the doubles. The photograph of the female single-seater, which Isatitsch was particularly pleased about, had previously been uncertain.

Olympic beginnings on natural ice (1964 to 1972)

First Olympic luge champion Ortrun Enderlein

Shortly after Innsbruck had received the confirmation for the Olympic Winter Games in 1964, construction of the natural bobsleigh and toboggan run began in the Innsbruck district of Igls . With the exception of a lack of snow in the winter of 1963, there were no technical problems with the construction; the Swiss IOC member Albert Mayer later described the track as the "most perfect of all slopes that [he] got to know during [s] an athletic career". Otherwise, Mayer was also impressed by the "perfect in every way" organization, he only heard compliments about it. Other observers also drew a very positive conclusion: In the German specialist magazine Olympisches Feuer , Gerhard Strabenow saw the course of the races as proof that “Luge is a competition that demands all the boldness and determination, the best physical condition and the great ability of a true sportsman ". FIL President Bert Isatitsch spoke of the “most exciting hours of his life”; he is proud that his commitment over the years has been crowned with this success. In terms of sport, the athletes of the all-German team shaped the Olympic debut of luge in particular : There were German double victories in each of the two individual disciplines - Thomas Köhler was the first Olympic luge champion for men and Ortrun Enderlein (both from the GDR ) for women . In the two-seater, however, the Austrian duo Josef Feistmantl / Manfred Stengl triumphed after the German pair fell in the lead. There had also been accidents in training before; The 54-year-old Briton Kazimierz Skrzypecki died in one of these . Skrzypecki was the first athlete to die in the Winter Olympics.

GDR postage stamp before the 1968 Winter Olympics

Four years later, the 1968 races in Grenoble did not build on the successful Olympic premiere. First of all, it became apparent that the preparation of the route, which had previously been rated as excellent, could not withstand the weather conditions. The individual runs often had to be postponed and rescheduled; only half a week late - on February 11th - the competitions began. After the first rounds, however, the races had to be interrupted again: Again, the action paused for four days before the track was competitively prepared again on February 15 and the two single-seater competitions were continued. When the conditions made it impossible to continue the competitions the next day, the jury decided to cancel both individual races prematurely after only three runs so that the doubles could complete their competition. The Austrian Manfred Schmid , who won the men's competition in front of two GDR athletes, benefited from this . They dominated the women's race: after three rounds they occupied positions one, two and four. After a sled check carried out before the third run, the GDR tobogganers were accused by a BRD representative of having heated up the runners of their sports equipment before the race. In doing so, they violated a rule that had existed since 1965, which expressly forbade this, so that the three athletes affected - led by defending champion Ortrun Enderlein - were disqualified after completing the third run. In her place, the Italian Erika Lechner was proclaimed Olympic champion in front of two West German athletes. Several GDR officials complained to the IOC, saw an "anti-communist provocation" and demanded that the exclusion be lifted. This request was not granted. According to MfS documents that emerged in 2006 , Lucjan Świderski was bribed for his actions by the associations of the Federal Republic of Germany and Austria. The question of whether the GDR women tobogganers cheated or were cheated out of their earned medals has not yet been finally clarified, although even the leading media in the German press now assume that there was no cheating by the athletes in Grenoble would have. However, the President of the FIL, Josef Fendt , refused to reassess the case in 2006 during his tenure. Klaus-Michael Bonsack and Thomas Köhler triumphed in the doubles competition . Köhler was the first tobogganer to win a double Olympic gold medal after winning the single-seater competition in 1964.

Although many titles were also awarded to athletes from other nations at the major luge events at the beginning of the 1970s, at the 1972 Winter Olympics in Sapporo the “downright sobering” superiority of the East German luge athletes continued: the GDR athletes who previously scientifically had been prepared and equipped for the track, won all eight possible medals, including the gold in all disciplines. Only in the doubles competition did the Italian duo Paul Hildgartner / Walter Plaikner keep up and then shared the gold medal with Horst Hörnlein and Reinhard Bredow . Both teams had achieved the same time to the hundredth of a second. In order to avoid such a draw in the future, the FIL determined the results from 1976 to the thousandth of a second. Before that, the timekeeping system had already caused another problem in the same competition: The first run had to be repeated after a malfunction in the seconds measurement was discovered. The victorious Italians protested against this decision; however, the organizers rejected the objection. In the women's category, Anna-Maria Müller , who had been disqualified from the GDR athletes four years earlier, triumphed . The men's competition was won by Wolfgang Scheidel , who like Müller retired from competitive sports after the games. The Austrians, Poles and West Germans who were successful at World and European Championships were clearly beaten. The latter had also invested a lot of money - an estimated 100,000 marks - in the preparations for the Olympics and ultimately did not achieve more than a fourth and two fifth places. The German team was only marginally more successful than the host Japanese team (fourth and fifth place), which had only been a member of the FIL for a few years.

Further GDR superiority (1976 to 1988)

Award ceremony of the GDR championships in January 1976: The two first-placed Margit Schumann (center) and Ute Rührold (left) also won gold and silver at the Olympics a month later.

As early as 1972, the GDR athletes in particular began to introduce technical innovations at the Winter Olympics. This trend continued in Innsbruck in 1976 , so that the toboggan competitions - which took place for the first time on an artificially frozen track - were referred to in retrospect as the "battles of technicians, inventors and designers". The West German participants who completed the competition in lacquer suits and claw gloves on all-plastic sledges were particularly innovative. In addition, the tobogganers from the Federal Republic of Germany wore helmets that narrowed to a point at the back and that had proven to be aerodynamically advantageous in the wind tunnel. There were different opinions about the usefulness of these "egghead helmets ": The news magazine Der Spiegel saw the helmets as a reason that "the federal eggheads" were once again on a par with the GDR favorites; other reviews rated the innovations as "not decisive for the race". In fact, the West German tobogganers were more successful than ever at the Olympic Games, with two silver and one bronze medals. As in 1972, all three titles as well as two further podium placements were the result of the GDR, for which Dettlef Günther , Margit Schumann and the double Hans Rinn / Norbert Hahn triumphed. A complaint by the Austrian Manfred Schmid that the Germans would be preferred in training had no consequences, as was a complaint against the GDR athletes for alleged manipulation, which turned out to be unfounded. In addition to the Japanese, who were already experienced in the Olympics, Taiwanese people who had only received their sledges in Innsbruck started toboggan competitions for the first time . Both in the single and in the double-seater, these "exotics" performed better than some athletes from Canada or the United States. Nevertheless, Hwang Liu-chong was the last to finish the competition, almost two minutes behind, as he fell after a good first run in both the second and third rounds. Hwang, who crossed the finish line after a total of 5: 22.646 minutes, still holds the record for the slowest overall time in luge.

Three GDR Olympic champions: Dettlef Günther , Hans Rinn and Bernhard Glass (from left to right)

Towards the end of the 1970s, in addition to the established tobogganing nations from both parts of Germany, Italy and Austria, athletes from the Soviet Union (USSR) started successfully at major international events. At the 1980 Winter Olympics in Lake Placid , the women from the USSR tobogganing were able to keep up and intervene successfully in the decision for the top places: Vera Zozuļa won the gold medal with a clear lead of over a second, Ingrīda Amantova came third. This makes Zozuļa the only non-German-speaking Olympic champion in tobogganing to this day (as of 2018). After many favorite falls, Bernhard Glass from the GDR won the men's competition ; In the two-seater competition, his teammates Hans Rinn and Norbert Hahn triumphed, making them the first tobogganers to repeat their Olympic success in the same discipline. Overall, the GDR defended its status as the leading luge nation with two victories, but with only three medals it won as few medals as only in 1968.

This development continued four years later, in 1984 in Sarajevo . For the first time in Olympic toboggan history, the East German athletes did not win a medal in the men's singles; The duo Jörg Hoffmann / Jochen Pietzsch also barely achieved the bronze medal in the doubles competition . Most observers saw the reason for the poor performance of the male GDR tobogganists in the fact that the inexperienced young athletes were not able to fully replace the top athletes led by Hans Rinn, who retired in 1980. The West German athletes, among others, benefited from this weakness, winning their first Olympic gold medal in luge in the double-seater race by Hans Stanggassinger and Franz Wembacher . The men's singles competition was decided by Paul Hildgartner, who had already become Olympic doubles champion twelve years earlier. The women's competition ended with a triple success of the GDR female athletes, led by Steffi Martin , who, unlike their male teammates, made no mistakes during the four runs.

In 1988 in Calgary , the GDR once again underlined its superiority in this sport at its last Olympic appearance with three gold medals. Especially with women, there were long gaps between the three East German tobogganers, who achieved a triple success for the third time, and the remaining athletes. The fourth-placed West German Veronika Bilgeri , who was referred to as the “first in the 'Rest of the World' team”, was almost one and a half seconds behind third; on the other hand, there were only about 0.2 seconds between first and third place. The men's competitions, in which the victorious GDR tobogganers had a lead of a few tenths of a second each time, ended closer than the women's singles. Especially for the single-seater race there was no clear favorite in advance: the reigning world champion Markus Prock from Austria fell far behind after the first run and finally missed the top ten in eleventh place, the now 35-year-old defending champion Paul Hildgartner placed in his fifth participation in the Olympics one rank ahead of Prock and thus did not intervene in the battle for the medals. None of the remaining drivers reached the times of the East German Jens Müller , who triumphed ahead of Georg Hackl . For Hackl, the silver medal marked the start of a 14-year series of successes in which he was able to climb the Olympic podium five times. The two-seater competition was won by the world champion duo Jörg Hoffmann / Jochen Pietzsch, their teammates Stefan Krauße and Jan Behrendt , who had never participated in a major event before , came second .

All-German successes and increasing internationalization (1992 to 1998)

Georg Hackl won five Olympic medals between 1988 and 2002, making him the most successful toboggan runner at the Olympic Games to date.

In total, the GDR athletes had won six of the nine medals in 1988, two more went to the West German participants. With the German reunification on October 3, 1990, the two tobogganing teams also coincided, so that from the 1990/91 season, for the first time since 1964, an all-German team started again at tobogganing events. Many former GDR athletes continued their successes after reunification, such as the Stefan Krauße / Jan Behrendt doubles or the 1990 world champion, Gabriele Kohlisch . For women, the all-German team - still with many female athletes trained in the GDR - dominated international events from the mid-1990s, and the German men were also the most successful together with the Italians and Austrians. In addition to the established Central European nations, the Americans also achieved respectable successes; In the men's single-seater, some Russians and Latvians also caught up with the world's best. Nevertheless, the Olympic champions of the 1990s all came from either Germany, Italy or Austria.

The two defining luge nations at the 1992 Olympic Games in Albertville were Germany and Austria, which together won eight of the nine medals. The Austrian team trained by the GDR Olympic champion Klaus Bonsack was particularly successful with the women, which, as in the 1970s, led to protests regarding the technical innovations. When three athletes from the Alpine country took the first places after the first day of competition, the Italian and US coaches filed a joint objection against what they believed to be illegal suits worn by the Austrian tobogganists. The jury rejected this protest, so the next day Doris Neuner won the first Austrian gold toboggan medal in 24 years in front of her sister Angelika Neuner . Her teammate Andrea Tagwerker dropped from third to seventh on the second day of the race, preventing the Austrians from triple success. The 1988 silver medal winners triumphed in both men's competitions: Georg Hackl clearly won the single-seater competition with three fastest times, while Stefan Krauße and Jan Behrendt were victorious in the double-seater. Hackl won in his four-year-old sled after he had not used the newly designed device due to poor training results. Athletes from Bermuda and the American Virgin Islands , who made their luge debut at the Olympics, but, like other "exotic" athletes, left some athletes from established nations behind them, provided something special.

The 1994 Winter Olympics in Lillehammer took place just two years after the Albertville competitions, as the IOC had decided not to host the Winter and Summer Games in the same year. One consequence of this change was the greater continuity among the world's best, which was also noticeable in luge: five of the nine medal winners from 1992 managed to place in the top three two years later. Georg Hackl was once again successful in the men's squad, Markus Prock was second again. The race between the two was, however, much closer than in Albertville; Hackl only overtook Prock in the last run with a lead of just 0.013 seconds. The other two titles were secured by athletes from Italy - the doubles Kurt Brugger / Wilfried Huber and Gerda Weißensteiner , who achieved the fastest times in all four rounds. With a total of four medals, Italy was the most successful luge nation at the Olympics for the first time, while the Germans, with just three medals, performed worse than ever before.

This strength of the Italian athletes was only a temporary phenomenon: In Nagano in 1998 the German team won all three gold medals and thus achieved the greatest success in this discipline after reunification. Georg Hackl was the first tobogganer to win his third Olympic title in a row; he triumphed with half a second ahead of the second-placed South Tyrolean Armin Zöggeler . The women's competition was much closer, in which Silke Kraushaar was only two thousandths of a second faster than her teammate Barbara Niedernhuber . The two US doubles Chris Thorpe / Gordy Sheer and Brian Martin / Mark Grimmette were the first non-Europeans to win Olympic luge medals. They placed second and third and were only beaten by the German duo Stefan Krauße / Jan Behrendt, who triumphed for the second time since 1992 and secured their third medal.

Developments since 2002

Armin Zöggeler , Olympic champion in 2002 and 2006

In contrast to the Olympic Games in the 1990s, the circle of favorites for the 2002 Olympics in Salt Lake City was limited to just a few athletes: As expected, there was a German triple success for women, as in all major luge events since 1999. This was led by double world champion Sylke Otto , who four years earlier had not even qualified for the German Olympic team. In the men's singles competition, three athletes stood on the podium, all of whom had already won at least two Olympic medals. Armin Zöggeler won the competition and prevented Georg Hackl from winning the fourth victory in a row, who was second ahead of Austrian Markus Prock. Nevertheless, Hackl set an Olympic record, as he was the first athlete ever to win a medal at five winter games in a row. In the two-seater competition there was the same country constellation on the podium as in 1998: A German duo - this time Patric Leitner / Alexander Resch - triumphed in front of two US teams. Previously, both couples from the United States had been given a chance to secure the first gold medal for their country on their home track.

In 2006 , for the first time since the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Eastern European tobogganers made the jump to the Olympic podium: In the men's single-seater race, the Russian Albert Demtschenko won the silver medal, followed by the Latvian Mārtiņš Rubenis . Rubenis' medal was the first that Latvia won as an independent country at the Winter Games; some Latvians had previously been successful as part of the Soviet team. While the now 39-year-old Georg Hackl clearly missed a medal in his last Olympic appearance in seventh place and was even weaker than his two teammates, Armin Zöggeler defended the Olympic title he had won in 2002. The same success was achieved by Sylke Otto, who once again led a German triple triumph. This continued the series that has been in existence for seven years now that German tobogganers were three ahead of all major events. The situation was different in the doubles competition, in which Patric Leitner and Alexander Resch could not repeat their success from 2002 and surprisingly only finished sixth. The two Austrian brothers Andreas and Wolfgang Linger won the gold medal . In the course of the race there were several falls, in one case the result was that an athlete - Ukrainian Oleh Scherebyzkyj - had to be flown to hospital because of head injuries.

IOC President Jacques Rogge at a press conference on the death of Georgian tobogganist Nodar Kumaritashvili

In the years before the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver , active people and officials criticized the local toboggan run, the Whistler Sliding Center . In test drives, the athletes clearly exceeded the planned top speed of 135 kilometers per hour and set new "world speed records" with 154 km / h. This triggered a security discussion, which initially had no immediate consequences. On February 12, 2010, the day of the opening ceremony, the Georgian toboggan runner Nodar Kumaritashvili had an accident , he hit an unprotected steel beam of the railway roof and died on the way to the hospital. His death dominated both Olympic coverage and the opening ceremony, at which a minute's silence was observed in his memory, and ultimately resulted in race distances being shortened and additional safety measures in place. Otherwise, the organizers ran the races as planned. Due to the shortened route, the start became more important. Since the Germans regularly achieved the best start-up times, the security changes gave them an advantage that was particularly evident in the male occupants. There they achieved a double victory for the first time since 1988: 20-year-old Felix Loch was the fastest in all four rounds and won ahead of his team-mate David Möller . Armin Zöggeler won his fifth Olympic medal in third place, drawing level with Georg Hackl in terms of the number of medals won. Two medals - like their male teammates - also won the German women, whose winning streak had been broken the year before at the 2009 Luge World Championships by the American Erin Hamlin . Olympic champion was Tatjana Hüfner for the first time ahead of the surprisingly strong Austrian Nina Reithmayer , who won the first non-German women's toboggan medal since 1998. In the doubles competition, the Linger brothers defended their Olympic title and won the race in front of two other brothers, Andris and Juris Šics from Latvia.

Natalie Geisenberger won two gold medals in both 2014 and 2018: in the single-seater and with the team relay.

The 2014 Winter Games in Sochi , Russia saw the first change in the Olympic toboggan program with the introduction of the team relay. Both this competition and all three individual competitions were won by German luge riders: Felix Loch defended his 2010 title in the men’s race, Natalie Geisenberger won the women’s race and Tobias Wendl and Tobias Arlt triumphed in the two-seater competition . The relay consisted exclusively of the winners of the individual races, so that at the end of the Sochi Games, Felix Loch was the second tobogganer with three gold medals after his technical trainer Georg Hackl. With two silver medals for Albert Demtschenko and for the Russian team relay, the host's team was the second strongest. The 42-year-old Demtschenko also set the record as the oldest medal winner in luge; Armin Zöggeler, who was two years his junior, was the first ever athlete to win an Olympic medal in six consecutive games. In December 2017, the IOC dismissed both Demchenko and the Russian squadron from the silver medal due to doping manipulation.

In the course of the 2018 Olympic Games in Pyeongchang, selective track construction came to the fore, especially curve nine of the Olympic Sliding Center , which is considered to be particularly challenging . After a driving error in this corner, the defending champion Felix Loch fell back to fifth place in the final run of the men's singles competition, after having been clearly in the lead. It benefited the Olympic debutant David Gleirscher , who won the first Olympic gold medal for Austria in this competition in 50 years. Overall, however, the successful streak of German athletes continued with Olympic victories in the other three races, with Natalie Geisenberger and the doubles of Tobias Wendl and Tobias Arlt defending their successes from 2014. Both Geisenberger and Wendl / Arlt were - together with Johannes Ludwig - also used in the team relay, in which they were the first tobogganists to achieve their fourth Olympic title.

Efforts to start new competitions

Luge on natural track - natural track tobogganing

The inclusion of natural tobogganing in the Olympic program has been discussed for almost 40 years .

Up until the Second World War, many toboggan races, including some major international events, took place on natural tracks. These are routes that are based on existing roads and are therefore adapted to the natural conditions. In the 1950s, tobogganing was increasingly relocated to artificial tracks, the features of which were extended, elevated curves and rounded side walls. This type of track dominated from then on and almost all international competitions - including the Olympic premiere in 1964 - took place on these man-made tracks. The infrastructure of natural tobogganing fell into disrepair during this time, several clubs were dissolved and the natural tracks were no longer used. In order to counteract this, the FIL founded its own natural track commission in 1966, which dealt exclusively with this sport and held international races again from 1967, and the first European championships from 1970 . Many athletes regularly took part in these competitions, as the discipline was particularly popular in the Alpine countries.

Building on this success, the Austrian FIL President Bert Isatitsch asked in March 1974 to take up natural track tobogganing as a demonstration sport for the 1976 Winter Olympics in Innsbruck. Isatitsch stated in his application:

“Quiet, tireless and modest […] the natural track sport was consolidated on an international level, where real amateurs fought for gold, silver and bronze in the spirit of the Olympics! […] Behind this desire […] are over 50,000 amateur athletes from 26 countries [,] who have practiced sport in the spirit of Olympia over the years […]. "

- Bert Isatitsch, March 4, 1974

The IOC did not accept this request; as with all winter games since 1968, the host country did not allow demonstration competitions. Another application by Isatitsch to the program commission of the IOC in October 1976 to give the natural track toboggan sport Olympic status was unsuccessful. Nevertheless, members of the natural track commission continued to pursue the matter: The chairman of the commission, Hans Wanner, who was elected in 1977, named at the beginning of his term of office one of his main goals to enable natural track tobogganers to participate in the Winter Olympics. During the 1982 World Cup , the topic returned to the media once more when the active players from Poland, the Soviet Union, the GDR and other Eastern Bloc countries did not take part in the major event. Those responsible rejected the accusation that these countries were boycotting the World Cup in order to sabotage natural track tobogganing. Nevertheless, the Polish FIL Vice President Lucjan Świderski spoke out against the sport being included in the Olympic program, as he did not consider the time to be ripe. Isatitsch also saw the discipline's dependence on the weather as a reason why natural tobogganing would not be accepted as an Olympic sport.

Nevertheless, further efforts followed in the next few years to include natural track tobogganing in the program of the Olympic Games. For the Olympic Winter Games in 1984 and 1992, however, the FIL failed again with an attempt to hold natural track tobogganing as a demonstration competition. In 1998 another request was made to the IOC to include natural track sport in the 2006 Olympic program. After great efforts by the FIL, the Association of International Olympic Winter Sports Federations (AIOWF) and the organizers of the Games in Turin also spoke out in favor of inclusion. At a press conference in January 2001, IOK Vice President Thomas Bach saw the FIL on the right track, but a few points still need to be improved. The drop in performance of some nations at the top is still too great and questions about infrastructure still have to be resolved. In October 2001, FIL President Josef Fendt announced that his association would “continue to make great efforts to successfully complete the process of including natural tobogganing in the program of the 2006 Olympic Games in Turin.” In August 2002, the IOC approved this project however a rejection, but was open to further discussions. In autumn 2005, the IOK spoke out again against the start of natural tobogganing, after the FIL had already held intensive talks with the organizers of the 2010 Winter Games in Vancouver and they were interested in expanding the program. In the meantime, the natural track tobogganists could also participate in the 2012 Winter Youth Olympic Games in Innsbruck; however, this goal was not achieved either. The Olympic Games 2022 in China failed again, now the hopes for the Winter Olympics 2026 in Italy are resting.

Team competition and team relay

More recent than the efforts towards natural track tobogganing is the goal of adding another artificial track competition to the Olympic tobogganing program, which has been made up of three disciplines since 1964. As early as 1988, such a fourth race - in the form of a team competition - was part of the program for the first time at the European Championships; a year later the first team world champions were determined. In the team competition, which has been an integral part of the major events since that time, a man, a woman and a doubles competed separately for each nation. The times of these three individual participants were then added up to determine the winning team. After the competition had established itself at world and European championships, the FIL submitted an application in the mid-2000s to debut this discipline as the fourth Olympic toboggan competition at the 2010 Vancouver Games. In November 2006, the IOC rejected this request. Josef Fendt, the President of the FIL, then stated that the cause of the toboggan association had become “the victim of a number of team competitions that were making their way into the Olympic program”.

With the rejection by the IOC the abolition of the team competition in its previous form was connected. In January 2007 he was replaced by a team relay for the first time. In this case, the three individual runners from a country no longer completed their runs completely separately from one another, but in direct succession. As soon as the first participant had reached the goal and hit a special marking, the gate opened for the next athlete at the start. The debut of this new discipline was received positively by spectators, athletes and the media, so that it was continued. In 2010, the FIL again submitted an application to the IOC to include the team relay in the Olympic program for the 2014 Games in Sochi. On April 6, 2011, the committee announced that its President Jacques Rogge had approved the proposal so that the 2014 team relay could take place as an Olympic discipline for the first time.

At the end of 2017, the FIL decided that for the 2022 Olympic Winter Games in Beijing, in addition to the start of natural tobogganing, also applications for the start of sprint races on the artificial track and, in view of the attempt by the IOC to bring about more gender equality, also the one that had previously only been intended for the Youth Olympic Games and to include luge doubles for women that have never been performed in the World Cup.

Two-seater for women?

As already mentioned above, the FIL rules allow two-seaters for female athletes. So far (March 2019), however, no noteworthy international races in this discipline have become known. Celebrities like Georg Hackl even criticize such an endeavor, among other things with the following comments: “With the corresponding starting height, this is a great challenge for the women. [...] This discipline has to be established first. The two-seater is more difficult to control than the single-seater, the risk of falling is much higher. "

Eternal medal table

Status: including 2018

rank country gold medal Silver medal Bronze medal Total
1 GermanyGermany Germany
(of which GDR ) (of which BR Germany ) (of which all-German team )Germany Democratic Republic 1949GDR 
Germany BRBR Germany 
Germany team all GermanAll-German team  		34
(13)
(1)
(2) 		24
(8)
(4)
(2) 		23
(8)
(5)
(1) 		80
(29)
(10)
(5)
2 ItalyItaly Italy 7th 4th 6th 17th
3 AustriaAustria Austria 6th 8th 8th 22nd
5 RussiaRussia Russian Federation
(of which Soviet Union )Soviet Union 1955Soviet Union  		1
(1) 		5
(2) 		3
(3) 		9
(6)
6th United StatesUnited States United States 0 3 3 6th
7th LatviaLatvia Latvia 0 1 2 3
8th CanadaCanada Canada 0 1 1 2

literature

Individual evidence

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  2. ↑ a b International Luge Federation : IRO - INTERNATIONAL Luge Regulations - KUNSTBAHN - 2010 edition (PDF; 726 kB), p. 55. Accessed on October 14, 2010.
  3. ↑ International Luge Federation : IRO - INTERNATIONAL Luge Regulations - KUNSTBAHN - 2010 edition (PDF; 726 kB), p. 13. Accessed on October 14, 2010.
  4. ↑ International Luge Association : IRO - INTERNATIONAL Luge Regulations - KUNSTBAHN - 2010 edition (PDF; 726 kB), pp. 56–58. Retrieved October 14, 2010.
  5. ^ Isatitsch: 100 years of tobogganing . P. 220.
  6. ↑ OFFICIAL BULLETIN of the INTERNATIONAL OLYMPIC COMMITTEE (PDF; 155 kB) on la84foundation.org. P. 6. Retrieved October 14, 2010.
  7. ^ Isatitsch: 100 years of tobogganing . P. 135.
  8. ↑ Wanda Wakefield: The Bobsled Controversy and Squaw Valley's Olympic Winter Games (PDF; 157 kB) at la84foundation.org. Retrieved October 14, 2010.
  9. ↑ Obituary - Bert Isatitsch (PDF; 209 kB) on la84foundation.org. Retrieved October 14, 2010.
  10. ↑ Jan Steler: The history of luge (PDF; 167 kB) on la84foundation.org. Retrieved October 14, 2010.
  11. ^ Isatitsch: 100 years of tobogganing . P. 186.
  12. ^ Organizing Committee of the IX. Olympic Winter Games in Innsbruck 1964 (Ed.): Statement by IOC member AR Mayer on the organization of the luge competitions (p. 187; PDF; 22.2 MB) in the official report of the IX Olympic Winter Games Innsbruck 1964 . Retrieved October 14, 2010.
  13. ↑ Olympic Fire 3/64, p. 20
  14. ^ Isatitsch: 100 years of tobogganing . P. 404.
  15. ^ Isatitsch: 100 years of tobogganing . P. 417.
  16. ↑ MDR : Fraud on skids? - The 1968 Grenoble scandal.
  17. ↑ z. B. in reporting on the death of the disqualified runner-up Anna-Maria Müller: Luge Olympic champion Müller dead (Focus). , Died: Anna-Maria Müller (Spiegel)
  18. ↑ Der Spiegel, issue 37/2009 v. September 7, 2009: Died: Anna-Maria Müller.
  19. ↑ a b Olympic Fire 2/72, p. 34/35
  20. ↑ a b Kaiser: Olympic Almanac Winter Games. P. 193.
  21. ↑ Steffen Haffner: Yesterday's Tricks: Revolutions and Quirks . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung . January 10, 2004.
  22. ^ Medals for mechanics . In: Der Spiegel . No. 7 , 1976, p. 97 ( online ).
  23. ^ Isatitsch: 100 years of tobogganing. P. 466.
  24. ^ Kaiser: Olympic Almanac Winter Games. P. 214.
  25. ↑ see also: List of Olympic champions in luge .
  26. ↑ Olympic flame. 2/84, p. 14.
  27. ↑ Olympic flame. 2/88, p. 19.
  28. ^ Luge at the 1992 Albertville Winter Games: Women's Singles on sports-reference.com. Retrieved October 14, 2010.
  29. ^ Kaiser: Olympia-Almanach Winter Games , p. 375.
  30. ^ A b Luge at the 2002 Salt Lake City Winter Games: Women's Singles on sports-reference.com. Retrieved October 14, 2010.
  31. ↑ Hackl can write Olympic history again at fil-luge.org. Released February 11, 2002. Retrieved October 14, 2010.
  32. ↑ a b Luge at the 2006 Torino Winter Games: Mixed (Men) 's Doubles on sports-reference.com. Retrieved October 14, 2010.
  33. ↑ APA : Olympia: Manuel Pfister fastest tobogganer in the world on diepresse.com. Released February 12, 2010. Retrieved October 14, 2010.
  34. ↑ Anno Hecker: Toboggan gold for hole, silver for Möller on faz.net. Released February 15, 2010. Retrieved October 14, 2010.
  35. ↑ Jens Hungermann: Felix Loch races to the first gold for Germany on welt.de. Released February 15, 2010. Retrieved October 14, 2010.
  36. ↑ Peter Ahrens: Gold with guarantee on spiegel.de. Released February 17, 2010. Retrieved October 14, 2010.
  37. ↑ The German tobogganists are worth gold on faz.net. Released February 13, 2014. Accessed February 24, 2014.
  38. ↑ Felix Loch wins the first German gold medal on welt.de. Released February 9, 2014. Accessed February 24, 2014.
  39. ↑ IOC blocks other Russian athletes - silver withdrawn ( memento of the original from March 9, 2018 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. on zeit.de. Released December 22, 2017. Accessed March 8, 2018. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.zeit.de
  40. ↑ "We wanted a selective railway" on deutschlandfunk.de. Released February 13, 2018. Accessed March 8, 2018.
  41. ↑ Favorite hole beats the decision run ( memento of the original from March 9, 2018 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. on sport.orf.at. Released February 11, 2018. Accessed March 8, 2018. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / sport.orf.at
  42. ^ Isatitsch: 100 years of tobogganing . P. 253.
  43. ^ Isatitsch: 100 years of tobogganing . P. 256.
  44. ↑ Steyrer, Wurzer, Theiner: 50 Years FIL . P. 200.
  45. ^ Isatitsch: 100 years of tobogganing . P. 266.
  46. ↑ Steyrer, Wurzer, Theiner: 50 Years FIL . Pp. 221, 269.
  47. ↑ Steyrer, Wurzer, Theiner: 50 Years FIL . P. 320.
  48. ↑ 13th Natural Track World Championships in Stein an der Enns / AUT (January 19-21 , 2001) - team competition on fil-luge.org. Released January 22, 2001. Retrieved October 17, 2010.
  49. ↑ FIL President Fendt looks back on a successful season at fil-luge.org. Released October 4, 2001. Retrieved October 17, 2010.
  50. ↑ Steyrer, Wurzer, Theiner: 50 Years FIL . P. 351.
  51. ↑ Steyrer, Wurzer, Theiner: 50 Years FIL . P. 363.
  52. ↑ Natural track tobogganing should become Olympic  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. on torggler-rodelbau.com. Retrieved October 14, 2010.@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / www.torggler-rodelbau.com  
  53. ↑ Natural track tobogganers still hope for the World Youth Games on kleinezeitung.at. Retrieved October 14, 2010.
  54. ^ IOC decision: Team competition will not be Olympic on fil-luge.org. Released November 29, 2006. Retrieved October 19, 2010.
  55. ↑ Germany wins the world premiere of the season on fil-luge.org. Released January 7, 2007. Accessed October 19, 2010.
  56. ↑ Luge: It's done ... Team relay becomes Olympic ( memento of the original from September 23, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. on bsd-portal.de. Released April 6, 2011. Accessed April 7, 2011.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.bsd-portal.de
  57. ↑ FIL submits entire package for Olympic admission
  58. ↑ Hackl criticizes plans for women's two-seaters on www.sport.de; accessed on April 3, 2019.
This article was added to the list of excellent articles on December 8, 2010 in this version .