Salt Lake City. Georg Hackl presented the German public television station ZDF with the best ratings ever achieved for any luge competition. Almost eight million television spectators were watching when the 35-year old athlete from Berchtesgaden in Germany made Olympic history in Salt Lake City by winning his fifth consecutive medal at Olympic Winter Games. The fourth and final run at Utah Olympic Park was watched by an average of 7.58 million viewers, meaning a market share of 23 per cent.

Before, the top television ratings at a luge race had been recorded during the 1998 Olympic Winter Games in Nagano. At eight in the morning, 4.1 million German television viewers had watched Hackl win his third Olympic gold medal in far-away Japan.