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Russians strong on home track

KRASNAYA POLYANA, Russia – The season of surprise finishes and home ice advantages continued Saturday in a pair of World Cup luge races at Sochi’s former Olympic venue.

Erin Hamlin, who captured the 2014 Olympic bronze medal here at the Sanki Sliding Center, led the American effort in fourth place, missing the podium by merely 0.03 of a second.

“Small mistakes at the start and out of (curve) 15 in the first run cost me the podium for sure,” Hamlin, of Remsen, said. “The second run was pretty solid, though. I can’t complain. I was further back at the start than I would have liked. I usually manage to get a bit faster on race day but never felt super comfortable with them today.

“Overall, I’m happy with it but I was painfully close to a medal. It’s always a bummer when you know where that time went.”

The doubles unit of Matt Mortensen and Jayson Terdiman, in just their second season together, have been inching to their first World Cup podium. Showing acceleration down the long Olympic track, the twosome raced to a slim first heat lead ahead of Italy’s Christian Oberstolz and Patrick Gruber.

But the end of the final leg, however, grabbed Olympians Mortensen and Terdiman as they crashed with the podium in sight. They joined many sleds, in the two races, that fell victim to a track that has always been analyzed as easy to slide but difficult to be fast.

“This track plays to our strength,” Mortensen said. “It’s a long track with a steep start ramp so a lot of the start is taken out of the picture, and Jayson and I can build some speed. We’ve seen that in the sprint contests. So really, all the factors for Jayson and I sliding fast are here.”

In the end they settled for ninth place coming across the finish line with the sled on its side. The mishap enabled the surprised German Olympic and World Champions Tobias Wendl and Tobias Arlt to advance from third place and take their 35th World Cup win, tops on the all-time list.

The trip to Sochi marked Hamlin’s return to the site of her crowning achievement, albeit in much colder conditions than the spring-like weather that greeted the world here two years ago.

Her Olympic teammate, Summer Britcher, 15th then, was eighth Saturday. Now the two United States sliders are in the top three with Britcher second and Hamlin third, separated by just three points. Second through fifth places in the overall women’s World Cup ranking are separated by 15 points with only two events remaining.

Speaking of surprises and home ice advantage, Russia placed 1-2-5 with Tatiana Ivanova winning gold ahead of teammate Victoria Demchenko who medaled for the first time in her career. Natalie Geisenberger salvaged the race for Germany with a bronze medal and now has a World Cup overall lead of more than 100 points.

Dajana Eitberger, also of Germany, was angling for another podium finish, but encountered problems early in the final heat, prior to the track’s first uphill section, and wound up well down the list.

Emily Sweeney, a silver medal winner in Lake Placid two months ago, like Eitberger overturned shortly after starting her runs. The two athletes were able to get back on their sleds and conclude the race for World Cup points.

Ivanova has now won twice on the World Cup tour in 2016, with a World Championship bronze medal in between. Her two runs of 50.534 and 50.489 seconds totaled 1 minute, 41.023 seconds.

Teammate Victoria Demchenko, daughter of Russian coach Albert Demchenko who won three Olympic silver medals including one at this venue two years ago, grabbed her first career medal. Demchenko took silver in 1:41.152.

Geisenberger was next in 1:41.213, followed by Hamlin in 1:41.249. Britcher, with three World Cup wins this season to date, had some of the fastest starts in the field and was 0.7 from Ivanova.

Geisenberger has 750 World Cup points. Britcher is next with 645, followed by Hamlin at 642.

Mortensen and Terdiman mastered the course in the opening leg, sliding as if being chased. With the 11th best start, they posted a heat-leading time of 50.294, gaining speed at each interval. In fact, from the final split time to the finish, the U.S. sled made up 0.358 of a second on Wendl and Arlt in a span of 10 seconds.

With a faster second start, the Americans were also picking up the pace and gaining fractions with the podium now in sight. But an error in that final section of the course took them out of the running.

“I don’t think we’ll get an opportunity like that ever again,” Mortensen said. “It was gift wrapped. It’s hard to say exactly what happened. We got a little too much height in curve 16 and came out early in the entrance to curve 17. It’s (curve profile) pretty square right now. We tapped that wall a little bit. We were too early into the curve and it just put us over.”

Wendl and Arlt have won the last 6 doubles events five World Cups and a world title and enjoyed a half-second margin of victory over Russians Andrey Bogdanov and Andrey Medvedev. The winners clocked runs of 50.376 and 49.992 for a cumulative 1:40.368. The runners-up recorded 1:40.889, followed by Oberstolz and Gruber in 1:40.992.

The Americans totaled 1:42.257 and sat on the track wall in disbelief upon concluding the race. They continue to hold on to fifth place in the overall World Cup doubles list with 468 points. Wendl and Arlt top the field with 867, followed by fellow countrymen Toni Eggert and Sascha Benecken with 762. The latter German team, victimized by the track in the first heat, fell to 12th in the race.

Austrians Peter Penz and Georg Fischler, third in the season-long chase with 715 World Cup points, took sixth.

Three-time Olympic medalists, brothers Andris and Juris Sics of Latvia, were 13th on the day. Two of their three Olympic medals occurred at the Sanki Sliding Center.

Sunday

KRASNAYA POLYANA, Russia – The USA Luge relay team finished fourth Sunday, just 0.02 of a second from the podium, as the World Cup program in Sochi came to an end in sunny and cool conditions. The result elevated the United States to second in the overall team relay standings.

In the morning event, Tucker West placed eighth and Chris Mazdzer 11th in the singles race that was won by German Felix Loch. After a slow December, it was Loch’s eighth straight win, including last week’s two individual world titles.

“I felt as if our (team relay) runs today were pretty good,” said West, a 2014 Olympian. “Unfortunately, the times weren’t quite where we wanted them to be, but that’s how racing goes.

“We learned some valuable information regarding our individual sliding, and our sled setups this week, so hopefully we can apply these lessons to the final two World Cups coming up. Russia really showed their strength at their home track this week, which was good to see.”

In all the home team collected four World Cup podium results over the weekend.

Russia scored a gold medal in the Viessmann Team Relay World Cup presented by BMW, but Germany created some anxious moments for the hosts as they stood in the leader’s box.

Germany’s final sled, the doubles team of Tobias Wendl and Tobias Arlt, started their run with a deficit in excess of 0.6 of a second. But the duo ate into the margin at each split time, and had the track been just a few meters longer, would have overtaken the eventual winners. They fell 0.005 of a second short.

It was one of the very few defeats handed to Germany since the team relay entered the World Cup in 2007. Two of them have come this season as USA Luge won gold in the event two months ago in Lake Placid.

Russia’s singles sliders Tatiana Ivanova, who was Saturday’s singles winner, and 2015 World Champion Semen Pavlichenko, teamed with doubles athletes Andrey Bogdanov and Andrey Medvedev, the silver medalists 24 hours earlier. The group totaled 2 minutes, 50.392 seconds.

Natalie Geisenberger, Loch and their doubles team, the same quartet that slid to 2014 Sochi Olympic gold, settled for second in 2:50.397.

Austria was third in 2:51.775. The Americans, with Erin Hamlin, West and the doubles unit of Matt Mortensen and Jayson Terdiman were next in 2:51.801.

The latter sled rebounded nicely from Saturday’s event that saw them race to the opening run lead, and then crash with the finish of the final heat and their first podium in site.

“We proved to ourselves (today) that it was kind of a freak event that happened yesterday,” said Sochi Olympian and front driver Mortensen. “That was our first crash in a year and a half, so that really frustrated me. The run today was nice to have. It was good for the confidence. It was good for the two of us to end our time here in Sochi on a good run.”

“I tried to focus on the really positive things that came out of yesterday, which was that Matt and I sat in first place in a World Cup for the first time in both of our careers,” said Terdiman, the back driver from Berwick, Pa., also a Sochi Olympian.

“I think that really solidifies us as one of the really good teams that are out on tour right now. We’ve been consistent all year with our race runs. Each race we’ve been able to go a little bit faster in our second run, and we were on pace to have a great run again when we had our little issue in curve 17. As disappointing as that was, there were many good things that came out of it, including the fact that we were able to mentally handle sitting at the start being the last sled up there and not letting that get to us.”

Hamlin led the crew with the opening leg of the three sleds and was second fastest among the women behind only Ivanova.

“My run in the team relay was pretty good,” said Hamlin, who won the 2014 Olympic bronze medal on this course. “I was a little late into (curve) 15 that I thought was going to be a disaster but actually worked out okay.”

West had the fastest reaction time among the men when the gate opened, and Mortensen and Terdiman recorded the second fastest doubles reaction time.

The course worked its way in and out of sunlight in the team relay, perhaps affecting the speed of the later starting teams. The Russians were among the early teams in the lineup.

“I’m not really sure what the issues were as far as finding more speed as a whole,” continued Hamlin. “The track felt good and pretty consistent. It was very sunny today so maybe there were some softer spots on the track from that.”

Germany is atop the overall World Cup standings with 331 points to the USA’s 270. Latvia, which actually led the series when the day started, did not finish Sunday’s race after the opening run crash of Eliza Cauce. They are now third with 255. Two more team relays remain on the schedule before the season-long medals are decided.

Since a season opening disqualification and then hitting a wall a week later in Lake Placid, Loch has returned to his perch atop the world order of luge with 30 career wins. Strong starts and fast runs, despite the uphill sections, once again produced a decisive victory on the long, 17 turn Olympic course at the Sanki Sliding Center.

The two-time Olympic champion and six-time individual world champion was timed in 51.950 and 52.017 for a combined 1:43.967. Wolfgang Kindl of Austria was a distant second in 1:44.399, with Dominick Fischnaller of Italy, the Lillehammer World Cup gold medalist, in third place in 1:44.431.

West had the two best start times in the field and posted 1:44.815. A two-time Olympian from Saranac Lake, Mazdzer was clocked in 1:45.019. His chances to contend essentially ended with a hit coming out of curve 15 in the first leg.

Loch’s tour-leading point total is 790, courtesy of six wins and two bronze medals. Kindl is second with 685, thanks to a total of seven World Cup medals this winter, six of them in a row to begin the season. Mazdzer is third with 545 points, helped by two victories and a silver medal. West is seventh at 469, highlighted by World Cup silver and bronze medals.

World Cup racing resumes in Germany for the final two weekends of the season February 13-14 (Altenberg) and February 20-21 (Winterberg).

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