Team Germany with gold in Team Relay to eighth World Championship title

Oberhof (FIL/29 Jan 2023) The 51st FIL World Championships in the LOTTO Thuringia Ice Arena in Oberhof came to an end with the Team Relay event. It was the expected exciting and emotional highlight of the World Championships weekend. In front of 5300 enthusiastic spectators, Team Germany with Anna Berreiter, Max Langenhan and Toni Eggert/Sascha Benecken was crowned Relay World Champions.

The German quartet won with 2:22.266 minutes just ahead of Team Austria with Madeleine Egle, Jonas Müller and the double Yannick Müller/Armin Frauscher (+0.023 sec.) and Team Latvia with Kendija Aprajode, Kristers Aparjods and the double Martins Bots/Roberts Plume (+0.400 sec.). The Team Relays from Italy, USA and Poland finished fourth to sixth. Ten of the eleven starting team relays finished because Team China fluffed at the changeover touch pad.

For the German team, which dominated these World Championships on its home track in Oberhof, it was the ninth relay victory in total at World Championships. Since the 2008 World Championships held in Oberhof in the form, only Team Germany has been on the podium in all eleven relay decisions, nine times at the top. Team Austria won gold once and silver four times and Team Latvia has won silver twice and bronze five times so far.

With a view to the World Championships statistics, the past three days were true festivals in black-red-gold. The German team won a total of eight gold, five silver and three bronze medals. Austria won one gold, four silver and three bronze medals. Italy won two bronze medals and Latvia one bronze.

"It started already on Friday with the sprint race, where all athletes delivered top performances. All of them presented themselves with good starting performances, which don't really matter there, and thus rightly clinched their titles. Yesterday, Saturday, our women's doubles had to fight hard for their victory. In the men's doubles, we had a strong performance with first and second place. The Tobis struggled a bit, but secured the vice world championship title through their starting performance. Toni and Sascha, on the other hand, were able to come up with two sensationally good runs," Germany's team manager Norbert Loch was pleased to report. "The women's result can hardly be topped with a triple win and Merle's fifth place. Today we knew about the strong Austrian men's team. For Max it's no shame to finish second here just behind a very strong Jonas Müller. Felix was the one who lost it. He had it in his hands to become world champion, but with two major driving errors in turn seven, unfortunately there was no more in it. In the team relay it was exciting again against Austria. I am happy that we could decide the competition in our favor."

The World Championship result of the Team Relay is available at the following link: https://www.fil-luge.org/de/ergebnisse/fil-weltmeisterschaften-16