Preview 2nd EBERSPAECHER Luge World Cup Whistler (CAN):
Dress rehearsal for the 53rd FIL Luge World Championships 2025
Whistler (FIL/13 Dec 2023) After a brilliant World Cup start last week in Lake Placid, USA, the world's best female and male luge athletes will be stopping at the Whistler Sliding Center (CAN), the Olympic track of the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics, this week. In addition to the World Cup races, the 13th FIL America-Pacific Championships will be held in race-in-race mode on December 15 and 16. Furthermore, the first EBERSPAECHER Team Relay presented by BMW is on the program on Saturday, in which the women's doubles will be integrated for the first time. A total of 104 sleds from 15 nations have registered for the World Cup, which is also a dress rehearsal for the 53rd FIL Luge World Championships 2025, which will be held in Whistler from February 6 to 9, 2025.
With three victories and a total of nine podium places, Austria's luge athletes delivered an impressive performance at the World Cup season opener in Lake Placid. Besides Selina Egle and Lara Kipp, who triumphed twice in the women's doubles, teammate Madeleine Egle also finished at the top of the podium in the singles. On the men's side, the newly formed doubles team of Thomas Steu / Wolfgang Kindl made an impressive start to the season with two second places. „Such a strong start is a dream come true and I'm delighted for the whole team. We've done a lot of things right, but we've also seen in which areas we still need to improve. We are now moving on to Whistler, where our sliding technique and equipment will have to be adapted to a completely different type of track. The program is packed, it will be a challenging week that we would like to bring to a successful conclusion“, explains Austria's head coach Christian Eigentler.
Six different luge athletes from four nations won eight races, and in all four disciplines there were at least two, usually three different nations on the podium. This also delighted Germany's head coach Norbert Loch: „It was a very interesting competition with different winners from different nations on the podium. The track in Lake Placid has once again shown what it is, one of the most difficult in the world. “
Max Langenhan was the most convincing member of his team, picking up where he left off last season: The 24-year-old won both races and raced to his eighth consecutive World Cup victory across the seasons. There was also plenty of praise for Dajana Eitberger and Saskia Schirmer, who finished on the podium twice on their World Cup doubles debut.
The hosts also had reason to celebrate. For the first time in 21 years (!), Zack DiGregorio and Sean Hollander won the doubles World Cup for Team USA. With Summer Britcher third in the singles and Asley Farquharson and Emily Sweeney second and third in the sprint, further podium places were celebrated. The US team could not have made a better bid for the 2028 FIL Luge World Championships.
Women's doubles integrated into Team relay
After their World Cup premiere last year, the women's doubles will also be competing in the EBERSPAECHER Team Relay World Cup presented by BMW for the first time in Whistler. From now on, there will be four sleds per nation competing in the Relay: two singles sleds (female and male) and one women's and one men's doubles. The starting order of the Team Relay, which is raced without interruption of time in one go with four sleds and six athletes, will be the women's singles as the first starter, then the men's doubles, the men's singles and finally the women's doubles.
The EBERSPAECHER Team Relay World Cup presented by BMW brought two victories each for Germany, Latvia, and Austria in six competitions last season. The German quartet was the only team to make it onto the podium in all six Team Relay races. With two wins and four second places, they secured the overall World Cup with 540 points ahead of Latvia (470 points) and Austria (340 points). This was the twelfth overall World Cup victory for the German team in the Team Relay, and they were also unbeatable at the 51st FIL World Championships in Oberhof and won their ninth World Championship title in the relay.
All races live with background reports and interviews on YouTube
For the first time, the live streaming of the competitions will be shown on the FIL YouTube channel in a stream with background information, analyses and interviews. The "FIL Studio live" celebrated its premiere a year ago at the EBERSPAECHER World Cup in Whistler, Canada. In the 2023/2024 season, the FIL is taking this one step further and will be showing the competitions and the FIL Studio in the same stream. Due to TV rights, the livestream is only partially geo-blocked in Germany, Austria and Latvia. Click here for the livestream: FIL Luge - YouTube
Quotes:
Robert Fegg (Head Coach Team Canada): "I wasn't with the team in Lake Placid for the World Cup opener because our juniors were racing their World Cup in Whistler. We had a very good weekend with the juniors. My guys won a couple of medals. They were Dylan Morse and Theo Downey in the junior men's singles, Embyr-Lee Susko and Kailey Allan in the women's singles, and Embyr-Lee Susko with Bettie Podulsky in the women's doubles. This means that some of our juniors will be able to compete at their home World Cup in Whistler. With our junior women's doubles we will also have a team relay.
Whistler is our home track. We definitely want to do better than last year. The doubles team of Devin Wardrope / Cole Zajanski achieved the best result for Canada last year with a 4th place finish. That was very good. We see the home World Cup in Whistler as an important preparation and dress rehearsal for the 2025 Luge World Championships.”
Trinity Ellis (CAN): „I was happy with my results in Lake Placid. I definitely had a lots of mistakes in my runs, so it is reassuring to see I was still able to have solid results, considering. The first World Cup jitters are now out oft he way and I am really looking forward to showing my best in Whistler this week.“
Carolyn Maxwell (CAN): „Lake Placid was a day of ups and downs. I was trending in the richt direction on my first run after a tough training week, so I was happy with that, but unfortunately in the second run, I wasn’t able to build on it and had a couple of mistakes. I’m still happy with the lessons I have learned. This is the direction I needed for myself and I’m excited to building on that for the rest of the season. “
Anda Upite (LAT): „I have never been to Whistler before. It will be a big mystery. I hope for the best, as I heard that it is more a speedy track and I hope everything will be good. “
Roberts Plume (LAT): „It was our first time in Lake Placid and with winning the sprint competition we will keep it in very good memory. We have been at Whistler only once last year. We had a rough crash in the training, but after that we had a good competition there. We know the track now quite well and looking forward to racing there again. To manage the track with speed and keep up with it will the biggest challenge. For racing up to 140km/h you have to change your mind to that kind of speed. “
Jessica Degenhardt (GER): „I think Whistler is a very nice track. It starts off at a leisurely pace and then a lot happens very quickly. Everything just must be right for you to pick up the speed all the way down. We were leading after the first run last year and we'd like to carry that to the finish this time. I think we still hold the start record. Maybe we can even improve on that. “
Norbert Loch, Head Coach Team Germany (GER): „It was a very interesting competition with different winners from different nations on the podium. The track in Lake Placid has once again shown what it is, one of the most difficult in the world. Our athletes did very well, even newcomers such as David Nössler, who did remarkably well in this strong men's field. We were able to celebrate great successes with Max, who was absolutely brilliant, but also Julia, who unfortunately gave away the victory in the Singles, but was rewarded in the Sprint on Sunday. Dajana and Saskia had two great days of racing in the women's doubles, as did Jessica and Cheyenne, who were here for the first time. “
Dominik Fischnaller (ITA): „I like racing in Lake Placid, but I made too many mistakes this time, so it wasn't enough to finish further up. I have good memories of Whistler; I was third there last season. I like racing there and I also really like the place itself. I'm happy that we're racing from the women's start. It would be cool to ride from the top, but it's brutally fast and if you make a mistake... The lower part suits me well if you're on the ideal line. I'm looking forward to it and I'm excited to see what comes out. “
Jonas Müller (AUT): „I really like Whistler. It's a gliding track, a high-speed track. It's fun to slide there. Unfortunately it's a bit too warm at the moment, but we're in good spirits. “
David Gleirscher (AUT): „The special thing about the track is certainly that the lower part is a high-speed section where it really picks up. Despite starting from the former ladies' start, it gets really fast. If you drift a little off the ideal line, you realize how fast it actually is. It's a cool track. The upper section takes some time to getting used to because it takes a long time to speed up. It is definitely a challenge. The upper curves are unpressurized, so you have to ride precisely and make sure you don't skid, and at the bottom you just have to let it run. “
Wolfgang Kindl (AUT): „The sprint race was certainly one of our best runs here in Lake Placid. The five thousandths we were behind, can be found everywhere, especially in the finish curve, where we made a small mistake. Nobody could have expected Thomas and I to do so well on our first World Cup weekend. We've bonded really well and I think we can still achieve a lot together. “
Christian Eigentler, Head Coach Team Austria (AUT): „We had a very intensive preparation, put a lot of energy into athletics training and sled building. The feeling was positive, but you never know where you actually stand before the season starts. That's why we held back on making predictions. Of course, such a strong start is a dream come true and I'm delighted for the whole team. We've done a lot of things right, but we've also seen in which areas we still need to improve. We are now moving on to Whistler, where our sliding technique and equipment will have to be adapted to a completely different type of track. The program is packed, it will be a challenging week that we would like to bring to a successful conclusion. “
Chevonne Forgan (USA): „The World Cup race in Lake Placid was good and for the Sprint I just decided to chill out a little bit. It felt like a really good run. We are feeling good, and we want to kind of ride this out for the next World Cup at Whistler for sure.“
Sophie Kirkby (USA): „Whistler has nothing but good vibes and beautiful location. I can't wait to go on that nice smooth track and really catch those curves.”
Schedule & TV coverage
2nd EBERSPÄCHER Luge World Cup, Whistler (CAN):
Local start time (CET/MEZ)
Thursday, December 14, 2023
18:00 (03:00) Nations Cup
Friday, December 15, 2023
09:00 (18:00) Training seeded group
13:00 (22:00) Men’s Singles, 1st run
14:30 (23:30) Men’s Singles, 2nd run
16:00 (01:00) Men’s Doubles, 1st run
16:48 (01:48) Women’s Doubles, 1st run
17:45 (02:45) Men’s Doubles, 2nd run
18:37 (03:37) Women’s Doubles, 2nd run
Saturday, December 16, 2023
10:30 (19:30) Women’s Singles, 1st run
12:00 (21:00) Women’s Singles, 2nd run
14:00 (23:00) Team Relay
Subject to change without notice!
Information about the Whistler World Cup and TV-Broadcast:
fil-luge.org/en/multimedia/eberspaecher-world-cup-27
Link to athletes‘ biographies:
Athletes Overview & Achievements - Int. Luge Federation FIL (fil-luge.org)
Link to FIL Livestream on YouTube:
FIL Luge - YouTube
