Calgary, Canada (pps) The 1988 Olympic track at Calgary will stage the world premiere of the first official relay race in luge next Saturday. The idea of the relay is to put more emphasis on the performance of the participating teams. „By introducing this new event we are also hoping that the relay competition will be included in the Olympic Programme“, Josef Fendt, the President of the International Luge Federation, FIL, said.
In the relay, each team will compete in the order woman – man – double one after the other. The exact procedure is: the woman single starts as usual. When she crosses the finishing line, a buffer-time begins which should ensure that the respective athlete arrives safely at the outrun. Then follows a variable chance-time. Within that chance-time, the light changes to green for the next competitor, the man.
This procedure is repeated for the change between the man and the double. As soon as the double crosses the finishing line, the racing time for the whole team will be displayed on the scoreboard. The winner is the team with the best total time.