Germany takes gold in the men’s single luge

 CORTINA D'AMPEZZO-- Max Langenhan takes home the Gold Medal for Germany for the Men’s Single Luge event in Cortina Sunday evening. After setting the track record Saturday night and again Sunday he was a difficult person to catch on the leaderboard.

 Kindl Wolgang wins the Silver for Austria and Fischnaller Dominik, the home town favorite from Italy won the Bronze. Max is 26 years old and participating in his second Olympics.

 Luge is a small sled that one person sleds down a track face up and feet first. Luger (participants), can reach speeds up to 140 km/hr. They use their calves and shoulders to steer. The track is 1,470 yards for men and 1,313 yards for women.

 The event takes place on the same track over two days. Each participant completes four runs that are timed to a thousandth of a second. The athlete with the fastest time out of the four attempts is the winner.

 The environment at the track was spirited. The spectators were invited to walk up and down the course for unique vantagepoints. There were large screens seating areas and concessions throughout the course and several helpful multilingual volunteers. The volunteers would help guide the fans and warn them about getting too close to the track at certain points.

 “We are USA Luge supporters” Brandon and Stephanie from Nashville Tennessee, asked what brought them to the track tonight. “We want to see Emily bring home the gold!” Emily Fischnaller racing for the USA female team next week. While here the decided to attend the Men’s race as well. There American favoritism was easy to spot as they were dressed with American winter jackets and hats.

 The best spot to watch was on the long curves on the track. A veteran spectator would view the first run watching the participants from the large bend at the bottom of the track with the largest crowd and the largest scoreboard. Then during the 30-minute break between runs hike up to the start and view the lugers from different points of the track finishing the run at the bottom of the track again.

 As the sun set and the race started the lights started to come on from the small village of Cortina below the track. You could feel the excitement in the air as the participants rushed out heading to their UNESCO Italian dinners, discussing the race results.