Consistency wins: Selina Egle and Lara Kipp win World Championship title in doubles

Altenberg (FIL/27 Jan 2024) At the 52nd FIL Luge World Championships in Altenberg, Germany, the women's doubles two runs turned into a record-breaking race. In the first run Latvia's Anda Upite/Zane Kaluma improved the track record to 42,334 seconds, in the second run Cevonne Forgan and Sophia Kirkby (USA) achieved the same time. However, it was not enough for both doubles to win the title. Their second runs were not good enough. Selina Egle and Lara Kipp can call themselves World Champions. The Austrians needed 1:24.761 minutes for their two runs. Upite/Kaluma were 0.050 seconds slower. Forgan/Kirkby were 0.136 seconds behind. The US duo won bronze at the World Championships in Winterberg two years ago.

As fast as Egle and Kipp were on the track, the Austrians didn't have enough momentum for the outrun. They had to walk to the finish deck. The spectators celebrated them frenetically. "It was really close at the end," said Selina Egle, who was in the lead, "we never dreamed that we would be in the lead today after the disappointing sprint race. The conditions were also very different from Friday, with temperatures around freezing. Nevertheless, Kipp said: "It was a hard fought title. Our advantage were the two consistently fast runs.

The Latvians Upite/Kaluma were delighted. "We've only done 48 races together," said Kaluma, "and now we're second in the World Championship - it's crazy." Still, the Upite pilot was annoyed: "It's a pity that we didn't go a bit faster in the second race. But before the season, Zane Kaluma didn't even think they could qualify for the Latvian World Cup team, and now they've even started at the World Championships. Zane Kaluma stepped in after Upite's backup Ozolina was injured in Whistler. It seems to work with the new team - the two bring home the silver medal.

Sprint World Champions Andrea Vötter and Marion Oberhofer (Italy) finished fourth, 0.221 seconds behind the Americans Maya Chan and Reannyn Weiler (0.397).

Jessica Degenhardt and Cheyenne Rosenthal missed a hat-trick of titles. The two Germans, the only World Champion duo in the statistics so far, did not have a clean run in the first run - seventh place. In the second run they again made a mistake at the exit of turn 9 and hit a big bump. With a time of 1:28.840 minutes and a gap of 4.079 seconds, they finished 13th. The other two German doubles did not fare much better. Dajana Eitberger and Saskia Schirmer were the best duo in sixth place with a gap of 0.843 seconds. Elisa Storch and Pauline Patz finished twelfth (3.529.). The national coach, who is usually very spoiled by success, reacted accordingly. "What our ladies showed today is very sobering," said Norbert Loch, "I can't really understand it, today they beat themselves with unnecessary skiing mistakes. That only leaves these placings". Eitberger tried to explain: "We already had a bad feeling in the sprint that the worm was in the bottle. Maybe we underestimated everything. Even though we were here a lot, we were not well prepared. We didn't have enough runs.