Luge-Italian doubles night the highlight of week's racing

CORTINA D'AMPEZZO, Italy, Feb 13 : After sweeping the luge gold medals in Beijing, another German full house was expected in Cortina, but though the sport’s most dominant nation won three of the five events, it was the two the hosts took that will be the abiding memory of the Cortina Games.

Germany arrived having won an astonishing 38 of the 52 golds up for grabs since the sport joined in 1964 and their 39th came courtesy of one of the most dominant performances of that 62 years.

Double world champion Max Langenhan set the track record with the first run of the first round of the men's singles, then proceeded to break it three more times for a crushing victory – Germany’s fourth in the last five Games.

Austria's Jonas Mueller was over half a second adrift for silver, with Italian Dominik Fischnaller repeating his third place from four years ago.

There was more German joy – and heartbreak – in the women’s singles as Julia Taubitz won an emphatic gold after compatriot Merle Fraebel, breathing down her neck, had a terrible third run to drop out of contention. 

Four years ago it was Taubitz, a five-times overall World Cup winner, who had a spectacular crash on her second run to miss out on a medal, but she made no mistake in Cortina as Germany won the event for the eighth Games in a row.

Elina Bota finished second to become the first Latvian woman to claim an individual medal in any Winter Olympic sport, with Ashley Farquharson getting the bronze for the United States.

The German gold rush was expected to continue in the doubles but Italy, thanks in part to the long hours the home athletes had put in to master the technical challenge of their new home track, upset the status quo not once, but twice, within an hour.

Andrea Voetter