Perfect day for Madeleine Egle: Victory in individual and relay races

Yanqing (FIL) Madeleine Egle won the opening race of the Women's singles at the EBERSPÄCHER Luge World Cup. Twice the 23-year-old Austrian had mastered the 1475-metre ice track at the Yanqing Sliding Center without any mistakes. Her first World Cup victory was perfect. And the first success for an Austrian since 30 November 1997, when Andrea Tagwerker triumphed at Königssee. 

The 59.390 seconds of the elegant luger Egle from the first run will probably still stand as a track record until the luge ladies return to China at the end of January for the official trainings of the Olympic Winter Games Beijing 2022. 

World champion Julia Taubitz came in second. The 25-year-old German was seven thousandths slower than Egle in the first run, but in run two she made a mistake after curve 13. There went her chance for victory. She was 0.106 seconds behind. The red-white-red triumph was completed by Lisa Schulte in third place, who thus stood on the World Cup podium for the first time in her career. At the start Tatjana Ivanova set the best mark in 7.188 seconds. The Russian finished in sixth place. 

In contrast to the previous training days, the conditions at the Yanqing Sliding Centre had changed. The temperatures had dropped and the ice was harder. In addition, the wind blew under the roof of the most modern luge track in the world. Some of the lugers were not prepared for this in their equipment. Some of them were correspondingly unsteady on the track. Even Olympic champion Natalie Geisenberger was not immune to this. Last season's overall World Cup winner stumbled in the first run after turn 13 and slid across the finish line next to her sled - 4.130 seconds slower than Egle. The 51-time World Cup winner had never finished in 26th place before.

Madeleine Egle was happy: "It's really cool that I now have a World Cup victory and can take the yellow bib of the World Cup leader with me. The beginning was a bit bumpy, I had a hard time in training. It got better and better, but you couldn't expect that. But sometimes there are surprises." 

At the end of the premiere World Cup in Yanqing, the Austrian quartet with Madeleine Egle, David Gleirscher and the duo Thomas Steu and Lorenz Koller achieved the next success in the Team relay. Both Egle and Gleirscher had big problems in their run, but Steu/Koller made up the deficit of more than half a second. The result list shows a lead of 0.375 seconds over the USA (Ashley Farquharson, Tucker West, Chris Mazder/Jayson Terdiman) and Italy (Verena Hofer, Dominik Fischnaller, Emanuel Rieder/Simon Kainzwaldner; 0.38 sec. back).  

Rene Friedl, Head coach and Sports director Austria: "We worked very well as a team, but yesterday in the men's event we saw how difficult it is to luge cleanly here. Today it worked out perfectly in the women's and in the relay. Madeleine has already shown her potential in the pre-season, so it is even more pleasing that she managed to win her first race right at the start of the season. Lisa completed the whole thing with third place, plus the win in the relay, which showed how challenging the track is for everyone involved."

Detailed results and further information on the 1st EBERSPÄCHER Luge World Cup 2021/22 at the Yanqing National Sliding Center in China can be found at the following link: https://www.fil-luge.org/en/multimedia/eberspaecher-world-cup-8