Berlin (pps) Luge events are on the Olympic Programme for the 12th time at the 20th Olympic Winter Games in Torino, Italy, on February 10-26. The luge medals will be awarded in the three competitions, men’s and women’s single and double-seater. The International Luge Federation, FIL, headed by President Josef Fendt, is hoping to add the team event as the fourth competition at the 2010 Olympic Winter Games in Vancouver, Canada. The International Olympic Committee, IOC, will decide about the re-spective FIL application this year.

The 2002 Olympic champions in Salt Lake City, USA, were Ger-many’s Sylke Otto, Italy’s Armin Zoeggeler, and Germany’s doubles, Patric Leitner with Alexander Resch. They all are considered gold medal contenders again in Torino. Of the 2002 medal winners, only Austrian Markus Prock and the US doubles Chris Thorpe and Ives Clay have retired from their careers. Salt Lake City women’s silver medallist, German Barbara Niedernhuber, failed to qualify for the German 2006 Olympic team.

Germany’s Silke Kraushaar, the 1998 Olympic champion and 2002 bronze medallist, Italy’s Armin Zoeggeler and Patric Leitner and Alexander Resch (Germany) will travel to the Piedmont as the 2006 Viessmann overall World Cup champions.

Twelve different athletes won the 24 World Cup competitions. In the women’s single, the winners besides overall champion Kraushaar were her two German team-mates, Sylke Otto and Tatjana Huefner; in the men’s event Russia’s European cham-pion Albert Demchenko, Austrian Markus Kleinheinz and German Jan Eichhorn in addition to Zoeggeler. Doubles’ winners were Italy’s Christian Oberstolz and Patrick Gruber, Germany’s Sebastian Schmidt and Andre Forker, US Americans Mark Grimmette and Brian Martin, the reigning German World champions, André Florschuetz and Torsten Wustlich, plus Leitner and Resch.

Athletes from altogether seven nations – Germany, Italy, Russia, the USA, Austria, Latvia and the Ukraine – achieved the podium at least once.