You can rely on the lugers: Favorite Johannes Ludwig won the first German gold medal at the Olympic Winter Games in Beijing. The 35-year-old Thuringian won on Sunday after four races ahead of Wolfgang Kindl from Austria and Dominik Fischnaller from Italy.
What a dominant performance: luger Johannes Ludwig stayed cool and won the first German gold medal at the Olympic Games in Beijing. The 35-year-old Thuringian won on Sunday after four runs in the Yanqing ice track ahead of Austria’s Wolfgang Kindl and Dominik Fischnaller from Italy. It was the eleventh individual gold by a German luger in Olympic history and Ludwig’s second Olympic victory after team gold in 2018. Felix Loch was fourth, Max Langenhan sixth.
With a lead of 0.113 seconds, Ludwig went into the fourth and last round on the longest track in the world at 1583 meters in the grand finale. In the end, the overall World Cup winner was 0.160 seconds ahead of Kindl. In the third run, the man from Oberhof set his own track record down to 57.043 seconds with a consistent and confident ride. Not even the competitor Kindl, who was tough the day before, could keep up. Although the Berchtesgadener Loch showed its best performance in the final run, it was no longer enough for bronze.
Johannes Ludwig already showed his dominance on Saturday
Ludwig had already demonstrated his strength on Saturday. In the very first run he improved the start record of the Russian Semen Pavlitschenko to 2.455 seconds and set a track record of 57.063 seconds at the finish. At half-time, Ludwig was just 0.039 seconds ahead of Kindl. The rest of the competition was already left behind.
With his second Olympic victory, Ludwig finally rose to the top of the Thuringian toboggan tradition. Wolfgang Scheidel from Erfurt won gold in the individual in Sapporo in 1972, Bernhard Glass made it in Lake Placid in 1980, and Jens Müller from Oberhof raced to the Olympic throne in 1988 in Calgary. Then Felix Loch, who was born in Sonneberg – now a model Bavarian – won gold twice in a row in 2010 in Vancouver and in 2014 in Sochi.
Source: Stern
I have been working in the news industry for over 6 years, first as a reporter and now as an editor. I have covered politics extensively, and my work has appeared in major newspapers and online news outlets around the world. In addition to my writing, I also contribute regularly to 24 Hours World.
