By Mitch Phillips
CORTINA D'AMPEZZO, Italy, Feb 11 (Reuters) - Italy’s Andrea Voetter and Marion Oberhoffer took a shock gold in the inaugural women’s luge doubles on Wednesday, delivering two silky runs on the new track they have quickly come to love, as their rivals faltered.
German pair Dajana Eitberger and Magdalena Matschina took silver ahead of Austria’s World Cup leaders Selina Egle and Lara Kipp, the pre-race favourites, who paid a high price for early errors on their first run.
Voetter and
Oberhoffer came into the Games on the back of an underwhelming World Cup season but, like all the Italian sliders, they have invested a huge amount of time in mastering the new Cortina track.
That paid off with a smooth 53.102 seconds opening run, which proved enough for the halfway lead in the competition of two runs – unlike the singles where athletes go four times.
Egle and Kipp, who have been the dominant force all season, made some early mistakes to come in third, almost a quarter of a second adrift.
Latvia’s Marta Robezniece and Kitija Bogdanova had a storming second run to put the pressure on, but the Germans and Austrians did enough to hold their ground.
It all then came down to whether Voetter and Oberhoffer could hold their nerve, and they duly did with another excellent run to bring them gold by 0.120 seconds.
They were engulfed by their teammates and officials at the end, including head coach Armin Zoggler, the last Italian luge gold medallist, who won the men’s singles in 2002 and again on the home ice of Turin in 2006.
The victory ended Germany's iron grip on woman's luge that had seen them win the last eight singles and three mixed team golds. Voetter and Oberhoffer are the first Italian women to medal in the sport since Gerda Weissensteiner won the singles in 1994 – the last time any non-German woman took an Olympic luge gold.
The second run of the men’s doubles, with Germany's Tobias Wendle and Tobias Arlt seeking a fourth title in a row, is later on Wednesday.
(Reporting by Mitch Phillips, editing by Toby Davis and Pritha Sarkar)
