Austria sweeps Luge World Cup races, Sweeney wins silver
IGLS, Austria (AP) – Madeleine Egle won a women’s luge World Cup race Saturday to lead the Austrians’ dominant season-opening display on home ice, while Emily Sweeney of the United States finishing second in the women’s race to equal her best result on the circuit in five years.
Austria also won the men’s doubles gold and the first women’s doubles race at the World Cup. The Austrians took five of the day’s nine medals.
Egle set the fastest time in the two women’s individual heats and won in 1 minute and 19.188 seconds. Sweeney was second in 1:19.404 and Germany’s Julia Taubitz was third in 1:19.436.
It was Sweeney’s best World Cup finish since winning a sprint race in Winterberg, Germany, in November 2017. Ashley Farquharson was seventh, Summer Britcher was ninth and Brittney Arndt was 19th for the women of the United States.
Competing as a doubles team for the first time, Sweeney and Britcher finished fifth in the opening World Cup women’s doubles race to open the day.
Austria’s Selina Egle and Lara Kipp were the winners in 1:20.019, with Germany’s Jessica Degenhardt and Cheyenne Rosenthal (1:20.195) second and the Italian sled of Andrea Vötter and Marion Oberhofer third (1:20.252) .
Britcher and Sweeney finished in 1:20.550, with two other American sleds, Maya Chan and Reannyn Weiler (1:20.788, 7th) and Chevonne Forgan and Sophia Kirkby (1:21.265, 8th), in the top eight of the women’s doubles test. .
In the men’s doubles race, Juri Gatt and Riccardo Schöpf pulled off an upset victory for their first World Cup medal and to lead a 1-2-3 sweep for Austrian lugers in this event. They finished in 1:18.915, just ahead of Thomas Steu and Lorenz Koller (1:18.994) and Yannick Müller and Armin Frauscher (1:18.998).
Zack Digregorio and Sean Hollander were eighth for the USA, while Dana Kellogg and Duncan Segger were 17th.
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