Doubles at the XXI Olympic Winter Games
|
|||||||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Pictogram for luge
|
|||||||||||||
Venue | Whistler Sliding Centre | ||||||||||||
Dates | 17 February | ||||||||||||
Competitors | 20 teams from 11 nations | ||||||||||||
Winning time | 1:22.705 | ||||||||||||
Medalists | |||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||
Andreas Linger & Wolfgang Linger |
Austria | ||
Andris Šics & Juris Šics |
Latvia | ||
Patric Leitner & Alexander Resch |
Germany |
The doubles luge event at the 2010 Winter Olympics was held on 17 February at the Whistler Sliding Centre in Whistler, British Columbia. Twenty teams participated. Austrian brothers Andreas and Wolfgang Linger, the defending Olympic and European champions,. won the gold medal. The silver medal was also won by a pair of brothers, Andris and Juris Šics of Latvia.Germans Patric Leitner and Alexander Resch clinched the bronze medal after edging out Italians Christian Oberstolz and Patrick Gruber, who were in third place after the first run.
Changes had been made to the track after a Georgian luger Nodar Kumaritashvili died during a training run before the Games began. The turn where Kumaritashvili died was adjusted and padding was added to medal support pillar nearby. In addition, the start of the doubles race was moved to the junior start, meaning not only that the course was shorter but that the athletes would enter a turn and then a sharp corner almost immediately after the start. This required a change in strategy for many competitors, and a limited number of training runs in which to develop it. However, media reports mentioned the changes positively after a doubles team, Austria's Tobias and Markus Schiegl, crashed in the same turn where Kumaritashvili was killed.