Winter Olympics: German wins luge gold

WHISTLER - Germany's Felix Loch, speeding safely through the final curve where a fellow Olympian was killed just two days earlier, won a gold medal today and brought brief but needed comfort to a sport being condemned by some for putting performance above the protection of its athletes.

Loch finished his four heats in 3 minutes, 13.085 seconds, well ahead of teammate David Moeller (3:13.764) and Italy's Armin Zoeggeler (3:14.375), the two-time defending Olympic champion.

Loch's dominant performance ended a luge competition tinged with tragedy.

On Saturday (NZT), 21-year-old Georgian slider Nodar Kumaritashvili died after being thrown from his sled at nearly 145 kph and catapulted into an exposed steel post, which is now a memorial with candles, flowers and a card on which was written: "Just like gold, your dream will live forever."

The track was shortened as a result, making it safer but much slower. In simplest terms, a shorter course gives sliders less time to gain momentum.

For Loch, who has trained in BMW's wind tunnels, it didn't matter where he started.

He was fastest, by far.

Born in Koenigssee, his country's sliding capital, the 20-year-old returned Germany to luge's summit by dethroning Zoeggeler, who was attempting to match German luging great Georg Hackl's record of winning gold in three straight Olympic games.

It's a mark that Loch, the new German wunderkind, may one day surpass.

"It's going to be tough to knock that guy off," Canada's Ian Cockerline said. "If he can maintain this, he could be on top for a long time."

Loch, already a two-time world champion, is the youngest luge Olympic gold medalist in history. Fellow German Dettlef Gunther was 21 when he won gold at the Innsbruck Games in 1976. Hackl, now a coach on the German team, won his first as a 25-year-old at the 1992 Albertville Games.

Of the 13 gold medals awarded in Olympic luge, nine have gone to Germans.

From the start, Loch was in a class by himself. He posted the fastest times in all four runs, taming a track that had a terrifying reputation long before Saturday's unfortunate incident. He had been bitten by the Whistler beast before. During an international training week in 2008, Loch crashed and tore ligaments in both shoulders, an injury that caused him to miss three World Cup events.

He began the day leading Moeller by two-tenths of a second. He more than doubled it after his third run and readied for his gold-medal descent more than one second ahead of Zoeggeler, the nine-time World Cup champ who has hinted at retirement.

As he completed the final, sweeping right turn out of curve 16, Loch passed the steel support pole that ended Kumaritshavili's life. The girder is now covered by a wooden wall, constructed during the night before the track was reopened on Saturday.

It's now a memorial and a monument to a luger who never got his chance to race.

Kumaritashvili's death brought scrutiny to a sport that has mostly been ignored outside of the Olympics. The tragedy also renewed concerns that the Whistler Sliding Centre track, a US$110 million, 16-turn sliding superspeedway designed for these games, was excessively fast for all but the top lugers.

There was heated debate, long before the fatal run.

His shocking death, hours before the Olympic cauldron was ignited in Vancouver, rattled many of his competitors - and the entire Olympic family - and forced luge officials to consider the possibility of cancelling the competition. Instead, they decided the games would go on, but only after altering the course so there would be no repeat of the terrible accident.

Following two investigations, officials moved the men's start down nearly three curves to the regular women's start. Previously the men had pushed off down a steep incline, allowing them to reach high speeds by turn 3, known as "The Wedge."

- AP