Excitement, premiere victories and Covid19 measures - 2020/21 season comes to a successful end

Berchtesgaden (FIL) The 43rd World Cup season of luge in winter 2020/21 was a very extraordinary season. The FIL protection and hygiene concept worked successfully during the worldwide Covid-19 pandemic.

Some races had to be postponed in advance and all nine EBERSPÄCHER World Cups as well as the 50th FIL Luge World Championships took place in Europe due to the general travel and quarantine regulations. Between 400 and 500 Covid-19 tests had to be carried out per week. The athletes and their coaches and support staff remained as far as possible in their bubble with the tested persons. In ten weeks of racing from November to February, over 4,500 Covid-19 tests took place. There were only four officials who have been tested positive, not any athlete was infected. The four people who tested positive for the coronavirus and their closest contacts were immediately isolated and therefore there were no further infections. 

Germany wins overall ranking of the Team Relay World Cup / Austria Team Relay World Champion

You could say, much also remained the same: Germany won the overall ranking of the EBERSPÄCHER Team Relay World Cup presented by BMW for the tenth time in the 43rd World Cup winter with 415 points ahead of Russia (385) and Latvia (330). Team Relay World Champion Austria followed in fourth place with 325 points. So not everything is the same after all: Austria became World Champion with the Team Relay for the first time in 2021! At the tenth Team Relay World Championships in total, since the discipline's World Championships debut in Oberhof in 2008, Germany has won the World Championships title eight times. Until the year 2019 in Winterberg, this happened seven times in a row. Then in 2019 the turning point came. Russia's team became World Champion for the first time. Last winter, at the 50th FIL World Championships at Königssee in Bavaria, the team of Austria with Madeleine Egle, Nico Gleirscher and the double Thomas Steu / Lorenz Koller won the title. Germany was beaten for the second time at a home World Championships and had to settle for silver.

Five team relay races presented by BMW took place in the EBERSPÄCHER World Cup. The sixth World Cup, for the final in the Swiss winter sports resort of St. Moritz, had to be cancelled due to heavy snowfall. 
Four different nations won the five relay races. Germany was successful at the opening in Innsbruck and in Oberhof. Italy won in Altenberg in Saxony, Austria at the World Cup in Königssee and later also at the World Championships. The Russian team was able to climb to the top of the podium in Sigulda, Latvia. Latvia’s team was on the podium in Altenberg and Sigulda and the Polish team won a medal for the first time at the World Cup in Oberhof. Klaudia Domaradzka, Mateusz Sochowicz and the doubles Chmielewski/Kowalewski convinced with a third place in December 2020 in Thuringia.

In the doubles’, women's and men's discipline, there were also many surprises, comebacks and premiere victories last season. In the following reports we will look at all the disciplines.