Luge Team Relay at the Winter Youth Olympic Games Gangwon 2024: Gold for Italy

Gangwon (FIL/23 Jan 2024) At the Winter Youth Olympic Games Gangwon 2024, the focus was on the luge team relay on Tuesday, January 23. The Italian team secured the gold medal with an impressive performance.

The team with Alexandra Oberstolz, Leon Haselrieder and the doubles Philipp Brunner/Manuel Weißensteiner showed the strongest overall presence on the challenging Olympic track of the "Alpensia Sliding Center" in South Korea. Alexandra Oberstolz laid the foundation with her convincing run. Individual champion Leon Haselrieder showed a brilliant run in the relay with the fastest time of all young men. Youth Olympic champions Philipp Brunner and Manuel Weißensteiner were once again the fastest starters. In the end, the four young South Tyroleans won gold in the team relay with a time of 2:29.470 minutes.

Especially impressive was the doubles’ run of the young lugers from Latvia. With the second fastest start time and an outstanding run, Janis Gruzdulis-Borovojs and Eden Cepulis showed that they can be the fastest YOG double on Korean ice. Together with Margita Sirsnina and Edvards Markitans in the singles, the Latvian quartet took the silver medal. They were 0.829 seconds behind the winners.

0.951 seconds behind was the Austrian team. And this meant the bronze medal. Marie Lerch led the team and handed over to Paul Socher. The final run was done by the double Johannes Scharnagl / Moritz Schiegl. In the end the young Tyroleans won bronze. For Scharnagl/Schiegl was it the first YOG medal. Socher won silver in the singles and Marie Lerch bronze in singles and silver in doubles. The team relay bronze was her third YOG medal in Gangwon 2024.

One of the biggest challenges in the Team Relay is the handover from one luger to the next. While the clock is still running, the sled in the finish area has to hit the touchpad with its hand to open the start gate for the next sled. In this way, the three sleds of a team in a relay race directly within the running time.

The quartet from Germany, who were among the favorites, were unable to finish the relay because their doubles sled crashed just before the finish line.

The relay team from the hosts, South Korea, gave a great team performance. Soyoon Kim, Bokeun Kim and Hayoon Kim with Jaeseong Bae finished fourth. Seamless coordination and well-coordinated teamwork played a decisive role in this success.

Ten teams competed in the final luge competition at the YOG Gangwon 2024: Romania, USA, Ukraine, Slovakia, Korea, Poland, Latvia, Germany, Austria and Italy.

Overall, the luge competitions at the Winter Youth Olympic Games in Korea were a triumph for the world-class lugers of tomorrow, who continue to inspire with their talent, ambition and team spirit.

92 female and male luge athletes from 26 nations competed at the YOG Gangwon 2024. Athletes from Thailand, Ireland, the Netherlands and Puerto Rico made their luge debut at the Youth Olympic Games.

History of the Youth Olympic Games

The Youth Olympic Games (YOG) for athletes aged 14-18 made their debut in the summer of 2010 in Singapore, followed by the first Winter Games in Innsbruck in 2012. Four years later, Norway hosted the Winter Youth Olympic Games in luge, bobsleigh and skeleton on the artificial track at Hunderfossen, which also hosted the 1994 Olympic Games. The last Winter Youth Olympic Games in Lausanne 2020 were held on the Olympic bobsleigh track from St. Moritz to Celerina.
The Alpensia Olympic Sliding Center is currently the venue for the fourth Winter Youth Olympic Games in the ice track sports. It also was the venue for the PyeongChang 2018 Winter Games. The IOC (International Olympic Committee) awarded Gangwon 2024 as the first venue for the Winter YOG in Asia.

Follow the Gangwon 2024 Winter Youth Olympic Games on the IOC Olympic Channel and watch the highlights of the day: Gangwon 2024 Olympic Videos - Highlights & Replays (olympics.com)