Luge stars to watch at the Milano Cortina 2026 Winter Olympics<\/p>\n
All eyes will be on the German team, led by three-time Olympic champion Felix Loch<\/a> and reigning world champion Julia Taubitz<\/a>, as the nation looks to repeat the gold medal sweep achieved four years ago at the Olympic Winter Games Beijing 2022<\/a>.<\/p>\n Loch comes into Milano Cortina 2026 as the man to beat in men\u2019s singles, topping the overall World Cup standings this season with four victories to his name, while\u00a0Taubitz will rely on steady consistency to pick up where\u00a0Natalie Geisenberger<\/a> \u2013 the most decorated female luge athlete in Olympic history \u2013 left off.\u00a0<\/p>\n Max Langenhan<\/a> and Merle Fr\u00e4bel, ranked within the overall top three in men\u2019s singles and women\u2019s singles, respectively, are also likely to factor into proceedings, along with Austrian medal hopefuls Lisa Schulte<\/a>, Jonas M\u00fcller, Hannah Prock<\/a>, Nico Gleirscher<\/a> and Wolfgang Kindl<\/a> \u2013 with the latter set to become\u00a0the first luge athlete to compete in three medals events at same edition of the Games.<\/p>\n Team USA\u2019s singles effort will be led by World Cup standout\u00a0Summer Britcher<\/a>, with teammate Emily Fischnaller<\/a> set to compete alongside her husband and local favourite Dominik Fischnaller<\/a> of Italy, who won a bronze medal in men\u2019s singles at Beijing 2022.<\/p>\n Germany’s\u00a0Tobias Arlt<\/a> and Tobias Wendl<\/a> will attempt to win their fourth consecutive\u00a0gold medal in the men\u2019s doubles, entering as favourites by winning the last three World Cup races before Milano Cortina 2026. Teammates Toni Eggert<\/a> and Florian Mueller might just be their strongest opposition, with Austrian and Latvian pairs also fancying their chances at the Cortina Sliding Centre.<\/p>\n There will also be plenty of interest surrounding the debut of women\u2019s doubles, where the Italian duo of\u00a0Andrea Voetter and Marion Oberhofer will hope to make history on home ice. They\u2019ll face a stiff challenge from German pair Dajana Eitberger\/Magdalena Matschina, Austrian duo Selina Egle\/Lara Kipp and Team USA standouts Chevonne Forgan\/Sophia Kirkby<\/a>.<\/p>\n Germany will then be favoured to defend their Olympic title in the team relay \u2013 an event they\u2019ve\u00a0never lost at the Olympic Games \u2013 but expect Austria and Latvia to be hot on their tails.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Luge stars to watch at the Milano Cortina 2026 Winter Olympics All eyes will be on the German…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":260143,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[85,46,105],"class_list":{"0":"post-260142","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-il","9":"tag-israel","10":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/260142","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=260142"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/260142\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/260143"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=260142"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=260142"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=260142"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}