Luge at the Winter Olympic Games 2018

[hckošice 15,520]

MIXED TEAM RELAY

 

Qualified Nations:

• Austria 
• Canada
• Czech Republic
• Germany
• Italy
• Latvia
• Olympic Athletes from Russia
• Poland
• Romania
• Slovakia
• South Korea
• Ukraine
• United States

 

Total Athletes Qualified  52

Total Nations Qualified  13

[phelps 8,285]

encouraging success for our youngsters in the men's doubles...

they will slide in Pyeongchang as the new junior world champions, as they won that title earlier today in Altenberg...

[heywoodu 16,004]

Germans haven't found their mojo yet, Langenhan and Loch both over 6 tenths behind Kindl. 

[dcro 10,210]

Poland is the only surprise.

[phelps 8,285]

wow! the Austrians seem to have found the magic touch on this track...

right now, they look well in front of the rivals, but I don't trust the Germans too much...I want to see all the training sessions before leaving them outside the medal candidates group...

however, Kindl is scaring me a lot...

Sochowski also is a very pleasant surprise...I hope he can deliver in the actual race, too (training sessions are not the same thing)...

 

I can't wait for the Group 2 results (take notice that those timings shouldn't be compared with Group 1, since the time difference between the the 2 groups is way too long and the track and weather conditions would change too much between them)...

 

p.s. the track looks way faster than last year...in both the first training sessions the best time is 7/8 tenth of a second quicker than the official track record (held by D-Fisch)...

[heywoodu 16,004]

Looks like D Fischnaller made a big mistake somewhere between splits 2 and 3 

[dcro 10,210]

Tucker West DNF, D-Fisch big mistake. I hope this means they didn't touch corner 9 too much.

[dcro 10,210]

Good news for Dom is that the other Italians were quite fast.

[phelps 8,285]

and it's Italy 1-2-3 in the second training session for group B...

but surprisingly, it's not D-Fisch on top of our team (actually, he's only 3rd), it's his cousin Kevin...

and really unexpected good runs also from Emanuel Rieder, who's been quicker than D-Fisch also in the 2nd run...

still very, very competitive is also Chris Mazdzer from the USA...

meanwhile the Russian are all half a second behind this time round (Repilov being always the best among them by more than 1/10 of a second)...

however, I guess the start numbers helped the Italians (they were the last 3 to start, when the temperature was surely dropping minute after minute at that time of the night)...

 

so, after day 1 of training, Kindl, Gleirscher, Repilov and the Italians (maybe also Mazdzer) look to be the most consistent medal candidates...but I still believe that the Germans won't be as bad as they looked today when it really matters (especially if temperature and humidity should raise a bit, as expected in the next few days)...

in any case, we have a real chance...and this is enough for me at this point...

 

p.s. however, if the track (and the Germans) conditions stay the same as today, this would make the women's race also very interesting (and possibly give the US girls a real shot at beating the Germans)...

Edited February 7, 2018 by phelps

[NearPup 3,496]

I saw Justin Kripps comment on social media that the ice conditions where top notch, looks like the forst training time confirm this.