Olympic Luge

The 2014 Winter Olympics women's singles luge competition generated plenty of hype, and the event lived up to the anticipation at Sanki Sliding Center in Sochi, Russia.

German star Natalie Geisenberger secured the gold medal with a time of 3 minutes, 19.768 seconds over four runs.

Here is a look at the top finishers:

Fellow German Tatjana Huefner put the most pressure on her teammate on Tuesday, winning the silver medal with an impressive time of 3:20.907, 1.139 seconds off the gold-medal pace.

American star Erin Hamlin lived up to the immense expectations and brought home the bronze medal. She becomes the first American to ever win a medal in a singles luge event, according to R.J. Rico of NBC Sports:  

Geisenberger led the event through the first two runs with a combined time of 1:39.814, and was flanked by Huefner at the halfway mark, who racked up an impressive time of 1:40.580. Hamlin entered the final two runs in third place with a time of 1:40.632.

No woman came close to catching Geisenberger, who had the best time for all four runs. 

Her performance was part of a historic day, as Sports Illustrated editor Richard Demak noted:

No woman broke the 50-second mark except Geisenberger, who managed to break the mark in three of four runs. Her performance on Tuesday will go down as one of the most dominant in the history of the Olympic sport.

The Germans dominated the event, but American interest in luge will continue to grow with the bronze-medal performance of Hamlin.

Before the event, Hamlin told the Associated Press via The Press of Atlantic City about keeping her focus:

I don't think, 'Oh, I want to make history' as much as I want to get a medal. I did once before, and I didn't even think about it then, so maybe that's the way to go. I'm just trying to set everything up, have fun, and be happy with my runs. That's the bottom line.

As a hero to women around the world and to Team USA supporters looking to get into the sport, the consistency shown over all four runs proved that she has the talent and mental aptitude to be a top performer in the event for a long time.

If Hamlin wants to beat Geisenberger and the Germans at the 2018 Winter Olympics, though, she will have to find some serious speed over the next four years.

Updated Medal Tracker

*All stats and information via NBCOlympics.com and Sochi2014.com.

Right about the time Sandro Pertini was handing over the Italian presidency to Francesco Cossiga, and Ronald Reagan was in the midst of his run as President of the United States, young Armin Zoeggeler, then only 14, won his first international luge race.

The year was 1985.

It was the beginning of a long luge career that culminated Sunday with Zoeggeler, now 40 years young, capturing the bronze medal in the men's luge singles at the 2014 Olympic Games in Sochi, Russia. In doing so, Zoeggeler made Olympic history by becoming the first athlete to win medals in the same event in six consecutive Olympics.

How good is this ageless wonder?

Tim Reynolds of The Associated Press offers a baseball analogy to put Zoeggeler's dominance in perspective: 

Consider his two nicknames: "Il Cannibale," or "The Cannibal," given to him out of respect by fellow competitors for his habit of devouring all foes repeatedly at competitions earlier in his career; and "Iceblood Champion," earned because of his cold, rational, meticulous approach during preparation for races.

How dedicated has he been to his craft?

For the 2010 Winter Games in Vancouver, Canada, the Italian national team asked him to be its flag bearer during the opening ceremony. Zoeggeler politely declined, because he didn't want to be distracted from making his first two runs at the Whistler Sliding Centre the following evening.

In 2014, the national team again asked him to carry his country's flag. This time, he made it work, then he put his game face on.

“Winning another medal will be very difficult,”  Zoeggeler said earlier in the week, according to The Sports Review. “The Germans, Canadians and Russians are very fast and very young so it’s going to be really difficult for me.”

In the one event where he has shined longer than any other in the history of the Olympic Games, his overall time of 3:28.797 was good enough to earn the third bronze medal of his storied Olympic career. He could not catch Felix Loch of Germany or Russia's Albert Demchenko over the final two runs. Loch took the gold and Demchenko the silver.

But the bronze is a coveted medal nonetheless, and it brought the total in Zoeggeler's personal stockpile to six. That total alone is impressive enough, but the fact that they have been earned in six separate trips to the Olympics, with years of training and World Cup competition in between each, makes the overall accomplishment staggering in scope.

Zoeggeler also won a bronze medal at his first Olympics in 1994, in Lillehammer, Norway. He followed that up with a silver medal in Nagano, Japan, before capturing back-to-back gold medals in 2002 at Salt Lake City and in 2006 in Turin, Italy. He also won the bronze in 2010 at Vancouver, overcoming a nasty crash on the difficult, deadly course to do so.

When he's not tearing up the nearest luge course, Zoeggeler works as a Carabiniere, or in American terms, a cop.

But what he's really made a habit of policing is his little corner of the Olympics. Over the last six Winter Games, covering a stretch of 20 years, no one in any single event has been consistently better.

This appears to be Zoeggeler's last Olympic Games. According to the Associated Press (via the Charlotte Observer), "his Olympic career ... is all but certain to end in Sochi."

A bronze medal at 40—not the worst way to bow out.

There is a chance he will slide one more time. Italy will compete in the team relay on Feb. 13, and Zoeggeler is expected to participate. As the AP pointed out, the relay will mark the exact 20-year anniversary of Zoeggeler's Olympic debut in Lillehammer. 

You have feasted well at the Olympic trough, Il Cannibale. 

The Olympic luge competition started Saturday with a track—and an atmosphere—vastly different from four years ago.

In 2010, on a too-fast track that unnerved some of the best drivers in the world, 21-year-old Georgian luger Nodar Kumaritashvili was killed when he crashed near the finish curve, flying from the track into a steel post during a training run the morning before the Opening Ceremonies.

Even before his death, sliders and bobsledders in Vancouver were on edge during pre-Olympic training runs. The track had them leery about record-setting speeds ever since its completion two years before the Games.

During 2010 Olympic training, five-time Olympic luge medalist Armin Zoeggeler was among those who crashed. U.S. bobsled driver Steve Holcomb and his crew, the eventual gold medalists in the 4-man event, nicknamed one curve “50/50” because those were the chances of making it through upright.

In Sochi, the sliders have slowed down and that's been well-received by the athletes. The Sanki track has seen a couple minor accidents that did not result in any serious injury. There are no ominously named curves. No sliders are being airlifted to a hospital. 

One crash was even notable for its positive outcome. Video of luger Shiva Keshavan’s training mishap went viral not because of an accident but because of a remarkable recovery (via Deadspin)—Keshavan fell off his sled, then somehow managed to flop back on it to finish as if the whole thing was planned. (He is from India, already famous for a pre-Olympic video showing him training on a wheeled luge sled barreling down a Himalayan mountain highway.)

But it’s slower in Sochi, for sure. And the funny thing is, among all these speed freaks, nobody is complaining.

“No, I don’t think the track in Sochi is boring,” said Christian Niccum, U.S. doubles slider, in an interview with Bleacher Report. “I don’t know when going 85 mph whipping around corners became boring for anyone.”

This Olympics, sliders are saying lots of good things about the track at Krasnaya Polyana. It’s not too fast. The curves are challenging but manageable.

“This is an amazing facility,” said U.S. luger Chris Mazdzer in a trackside interview with reporters. “I think that everybody loves this track. This is a great facility for competition. There’s nothing negative about this facility at all. Most people are feeling comfortable here.”

The Sochi track, largely constructed after Kumaritashvili's death, is a radically different design.

“They’re about as opposite as they can be," U.S. luger and one-time world champion Erin Hamlin said in a teleconference, talking about the two tracks. “The turns are bigger and not as tight.”

Completed with safety in mind, Sochi’s track is the only one on the World Cup tour with three uphill sections to slow luge, skeleton and bobsleds.

“It actually made the Sochi track more exciting,” said Niccum. “I do like going fast. That is for sure a huge reason for my passion in the sport.”

Don’t think it has turned into a Disney ride. The average speed from Whistler, where the Vancouver events were held, was 95 mph. In Krasnaya Polyana—the Sochi site—it is 85. That’s still pretty fast when you’re wearing a speed suit and laying on a bare-bones sled with no walls or brakes.

Maybe this represents some kind of tipping point where athletes—or at least some of them—agree that enough is enough.

At the Winter Olympics, Citius, Altius, Fortius (faster, higher, stronger) seems to be as much a directive as a motto. Our menu of high-flying, dangerous sports keeps expanding and now includes more high-flying events like slopestyle and freestyle ski halfpipe this Games.

A luger died at the Olympics, and the track was adjusted to be slower. Yet there’s little indication other events will follow luge’s lead, even with recent disasters.

Ski halfpipe pioneer Sarah Burke helped get her sport into these Olympics. Yet Burke, participating in an exhibition event, died in a halfpipe crash before she could compete here. Snowboarder Kevin Pearce, on the cusp of a riveting rivalry with the sport’s superstar, Shaun White, suffered a life-altering head injury just before the 2010 Vancouver Games when he slammed his head on a halfpipe during training.

So in the past four years, two of the most prominent names in winter action sports—Burke and Pearce—crashed in a halfpipe with tragic consequences. Yet halfpipes haven’t been made smaller or less steep, because big air draws large audiences.

So these sports keep going bigger.

White took a lot of air out of the slopestyle event this week when he withdrew before the competition, saying he felt the course was dangerous. Gamesmanship or not—rivals said he backed out because he was scared to lose—evidence seemed to prove him right with several accidents, including a broken collarbone suffered by medal favorite Torstein Horgmo of Norway, sustained during training. Finnish rider Marika Enne was taken off the course with a concussion. These injuries forced officials to tame down the course before the men's final.

Jumps and tricks in events like freestyle moguls and aerials are getting more complex, needing more hang time. As thrilling as these events are, it’s hard not to feel an undercurrent of impending disaster, like that Whistler luge track from four years ago that was just too fast.

Even a few mph can make a difference.

“I tell you, hitting the ice at 90 mph with nothing but a helmet and a spandex type of suit can sting a little more then doing it at 75-80 mph,” Niccum said.

Athletes at the track want to put the 2010 death behind them. Slower and safer runs will help. For the sliding sports, at least.

"It is a tough thing,” said Mazdzer. “We are a close community. And when a tragedy like that happens, with such a small group of athletes, it definitely affects us. But I know right now we’re more looking forward.”

Bruno Banani is a Tongan luger, the first Winter Olympian from the island nation.

Bruno Banani is also the name of a German underwear company, which sponsored the luger's bid for the Olympics, according to German magazine Der Spiegel (via ABC News). In order to gain the company's sponsorship, Banani legally changed his name. He is, as far as we can tell, the only Olympic athlete to change his name to an underwear company, or, for that matter, any other company. 

This has, of course, caused controversy, since the International Olympic Committee is not exactly keen on non-credentialed corporations sponsoring a portion of the games. 

But let's be clear: this "controversy" isn't really a controversy. Banani—who's real name is Fuahea Semi—is here on his own merits. The fact that a corporation sponsored his training is, all things considered, pretty innocent.  

Banani, who had never heard of luge when the Tongan government—at the behest of the Royal Princes— decided to create a winter sports program in 2008, has taken to the sport with incredible aplomb. He almost qualified for the Vancouver Games and qualified for Sochi after a 28th-place finish in a race in Park City, Utah. 

And while he's not a medal threat, and will probably finish near the bottom of the pack, his story actually embodies the Olympic spirit. Banani didn't let the fact that he lives on an island that has an average temperature of 60 degrees stop him from competing at the highest level.

Yes, he changed his name to receive the funding, but there's nothing technically wrong with that, it may be morally suspect, especially since the ideal of amateurism is front and center at the Olympic ideal.

But those days are, in reality, over. Professional hockey players will travel to Sochi, just like professional basketball players traveled to London in 2012.

And while there will be some that say this establishes a precedent—now pitching for the U.S. Softball team, it's Old Navy!—in reality, nothing much will come of this. If this "stunt"—if you can even call it that—leads to more nations and more people realizing a dream of competing at the highest stage, then it will end up being something pretty productive.

Besides, the Olympics often talks of being the "global" games. If this is one way to get warm-climate countries like Tonga into the Winter Olympics, then the IOC should be all for it. There is a plethora of untapped athletic potential in some of the warmer-climate countries; the IOC should do all it can to develop that talent. 

Was changing his name a bit much? Perhaps. But Banani has proven that he has the skills to compete on the biggest stage. And it's even more impressive that he started as a luger only six years ago. His story should be as inspiring as the Jamaican bobsled team from the 1988 Winter Games in Calgary. Instead, he's being portrayed as a sell-out.  

At this point, it doesn't really matter how well Banani does in the competition. First place or last, he has blazed a trail for his country. Even if you question his morals—which, again, I do not—you have to respect his commitment and passion to the sport.