Germany’s Tatjana Huefner claimed gold in the women’s singles on Tuesday as the German team threaten to sweep all three luge titles at the 2010 Olympic Winter Games.
Huefner posted the fastest time of 2mins 46.524sec over the four runs while Austria’s Nina Reithmayer claimed second at 0.490sec behind with Germany’s Natalie Geisenberger third, 0.577sec off the pace.
With the body of Nodar Kumaritashvili flown home to Georgia on Monday, the mood was still sombre here for Tuesday’s women’s runs at the Whistler Sliding Centre, where the Georgian died in a training run accident last week.
After 20-year-old Felix Loch dominated the field to claim the men’s singles title on Sunday, Huefner claimed victory in the women’s with a flawless fourth run and only the doubles title remains to be decided.
Having held an overnight lead of 0.05sec over the field, Huefner turned the screw on Tuesday’s third run with an almost perfect slide to open a 0.268sec gap.
The margin between the German and Reithmayer in second looked decisive and so it proved as the German clocked a top speed of 134.1kph on the last run to take gold.
Germany’s women have dominated the luge in recent Winter Games.
Reithmayer has the distinction of being the only non-German to claim an Olympic medal in the women’s singles luge this century after Germans took gold, silver and bronze at both Salt Lake City in 2002 and Turin four years ago.
Since the country reunified in 1990, Germany has won the men’s, women’s and doubles titles at Nagano in 1998 and at Calgary in 1988.
In the doubles, Austria’s Linger brothers, Andreas and Wolfgang, are the defending Olympic champions from Turin and will be challenged by Germany’s Andre Florschuetz and Torsten Wustlich, who won silver in Turin.

source: www.vancouver2010.com