Felix Loch wins European Championship title - best Latvian Darznieks on finishes 4th in Sigulda

Sigulda (FIL): Felix Loch demonstrated his dominance at the EBERSPÄCHER World Cup in Sigulda, which was also held as the 52nd FIL European Championships. With best times in both runs, the 31-year-old luger from Koenigssee won his third European Championship title in his 46th World Cup success.

Second, 0.220 seconds behind, was Loch's teammate Johannes Ludwig. The 34-year-old was thus unable to successfully defend his World Cup victory in Sigulda from the previous year, but he was nevertheless satisfied. "First and second place for Germany - we had never done that in Sigulda before," said Ludwig, beaming with joy, "just awesome”. Third place went to Italy's Dominik Fischnaller, 0.287 seconds behind. "I am really satisfied with the medal," said the South Tyrolean, "especially because we had to cancel the training course here in preparation and could not train because of a positive coronavirus case in the team."

Actually, the track in Latvia is not really one of Loch's favorite tracks. In his long career, he had won there only twice. That's why he had tackled the race with a different set-up. "I was tuned more for the lower part," he explained, "I had done that consciously, because the last few years it has always faltered at the bottom, it was good at the top." His reasoning worked out. With 123.4 km/h in the first and 123.9 km/h in the second run, he also drove through the light barrier with the highest speed by far. Ludwig shouted his joy about the good performance into the camera: "I think Sigulda is my favorite track."

The real surprise of the race in Sigulda was the performance of the Latvian and Russian lugers. They have always played up their advantage on the demanding track due to the many training runs. But this year they made too many mistakes. Latvian Arturs Darznieks finished fourth with 0.308 seconds ahead of the three Russians Semen Pavlichenko (0.371 sec. back), Aleksandr Gorbatcvich (0.408) and World Champion Roman Repilov (0.419).

The U23 European Championship was also held as a race within a race. The title was secured by Max Langenhan ahead of Latvian Gints Berzins and German Moritz Bollmann. In the World Cup ranking, Langenhan, who was the only serial winner this season to beat Felix Loch in the sprint in Winterberg, had finished tenth.

The detailed results of the 6th EBERSPÄCHER Luge World Cup in Sigulda (LAT) can be found using the following link: https://www.fil-luge.org/en/multimedia/eberspaecher-world-cup-4

Results of the 52nd FIL Luge European Championships and the 2021 U23 European Championships in Sigulda (LAT) can be found here: https://www.fil-luge.org/en/multimedia/fil-european-championships-9