It has been four years since the stars of the sliding sports, which can be wagered on 해외배팅사이트, took to the ice in Pyeongchang, and in that some some things have changed (Monobob is now a thing!) and others have not (Francesco Friedrich continues to be very good). But it’s a new track full of new and old names alike, and the Olympic sliding sport program begins on Saturday, February 5 with men’s luge and will continue almost daily until the Closing Ceremony.
For a full schedule of events, click here for the sliding sport schedule with start times.
With that, here is the 2022 Sliding Sport Preview
Men’s Luge
The 2021/2022 World Cup season was a breakout year for Johannes Ludwig. The German slider has lingered around the medals and won his share of races over the years, but this season he won the most golds of anyone, won the most medals of anyone, and won the World Cup overall title outright before the final race of the season. On top of that, he won the test event earlier in the season by a massive margin, solidifying him as a favorite going into the Olympics.
However, teammate Felix Loch did finish second in that World Cup race in Yanqing, finished third overall in points, and is a two-time Olympic gold medalist in the men’s singles event, so he most certainly should not be counted out. Nor should defending Olympic champion David Gleirscher, who didn’t have the strongest of seasons leading into these Olympic Games but did finish fourth in the test event as the top non-German.
Wolfgang Kindl finished a strong season in second place after winning the season finale in St. Moritz and will expect to do well. Like Kindl, Latvian Kristers Aparjods had a consistent season that saw him with multiple gold medals as he finished tie with Loch for third overall. While Yanqing was his worst finish of the season, a season’s worth of progress should leave him in better shape going into the opening heat at the sliding center.
American Chris Mazdzer had a disappointing season coming into the 2022 Olympic Winter Games. However, in 2018 he’d come into the Games at the end of another rough season and slid to a silver medal, so he most certainly should not be counted out in what will likely be his last Olympics.
Women’s Luge
Germany has had a lock on gold in women’s luge since the 1998 Nagano games. Starting with Nagano, Germany has won every gold medal and 14 of the 18 available medals in that time.
Austria’s Madeleine Egle will look to break that stranglehold as the winner of the test event earlier in the season and as someone who battled with Germany’s Julia Taubitz over the course of the 2021/2022 season. While Taubitz took the overall title, it came down to the last race, and while Egle was edged out she did finish the season with the most gold medals in the classification with five.
All of that said, Natalie Geisenberger is still around and did win the last World Cup race in St. Moritz, and has won the last two Olympic gold medals. While she finished 26th in the test event, that was due to a late issue in her first run. Her second trip down was the fourth quickest of that run and showed that she’ll be a contender in the coming Games.
Though she’s still on her way back from injury, Tatyana Ivanova expects to be in the medal hunt in Yanqing along with Latvia’s Eliza Tiruma and Kendija Aparjode. Both women slid well during the season and had a decent showing in the test event.
All three women from the American team, Ashley Farquharson, Summer Britcher, and Emily Sweeney, expect to find themselves lingering around the medals. Farquharson, making her Olympic debut, finished eighth in the test event.
Canadian Trinity Ellis finished tenth in that test event and is in the best sliding form of her life.
Doubles Luge
Andris and Juris Sics have been around for a long time, and have the Olympic hardware to show for it. The Latvian duo won silver in Vancouver and backed that up with a bronze in Sochi. They were, however, kept off the podium in Pyeongchang but appear to be sliding better than ever coming into the Beijing Olympics. The Sics brothers finished the year just behind Toni Eggert and Sascha Benecken after the German duo rallied late in the season to win three of their last four races to take the overall title by just 24 points.
Eggert and Benecken will look to not just hold off the brothers Sics, but also their teammates Tobias Wendl and Tobias Arlt, who are the two-time defending Olympic gold medalists. While Wendl and Arlt “only” won one race over the course of the season, they were in the top five in ten of the 12 races over the course of the season.
Austrians Thomas Steu and Lorenz Koller missed a portion of the season due to injury, but were a force in ever race they did enter. They finished second in the test even and will expect to give Austria their fifth straight Olympics with a medal in doubles luge.
The United States and Canada will each send one doubles team to the 2022 Olympic Winter Games. For Canada, it will be their veteran team of Tristan Walker and Justin Snith on ice, while for the Americans the young duo of Zachary Di Gregorio and Sean Hollander will fly the flag. The Americans struggled in Yanqing, while the Canadians did have speed but not quite the finish to show for it.
Luge Team Relay
The luge team relay has been held in the last two Olympics, with Germany winning gold in both of those events. They will once again enter these Olympic Games as the favorite in the relay, but will expect Latvia, Austria, and Russia to be right there.
Canada, the defending silver medalists in the event, have nearly completely retooled and will have veterans Walker and Snith running the doubles anchor leg for them, while the American team will need a big slide by their young doubles team to look to replicate their silver medal in the test event in Yanqing.
Men’s Skeleton
The men’s skeleton event may be the trickiest race to call over the entire Olympic sliding sport program. One would expect Martins Dukurs to be the odds on favorite to win gold as the World Cup champion and winningest skeleton athlete of all time.
However, men’s skeleton gold medal has been won by a home track slider in the last three Olympics (and five of the seven times overall). China did not train with the rest of the world during the international training period, nor did they compete in the test event at the end of the ITP. Further, their top-ranked slider Wenqiang Geng is being held out of the games, with European Cup gold medalist Zheng Yin taking his spot.
This is all to say that it very well could be China’s race to lose. Very few outside of the Chinese program have any idea what kind of times are being put down by their men, but you’ll have to expect that either Yin or Wengang Yan will be right up there when the medals are being decided.
Outside of the Chinese program, Germany took three of the top four spots in the test event in late October, with Gassner winning, Jungk finishing third and Christopher Grotheer fourth. Marcus Wyatt was the slider in between all of the Germans, but the British program has struggled to find pace over most of the season and will need to rally strong to find their way back to replicate Dom Parsons’ effort in 2018.
Expect the regulars to be contending for medals in the men’s race, with the Dukurs brothers, Alexander Tretiakov, and Sungbin Yun joining the Germans in the battle for gold. Russia’s two top sliders in Yanqing’s test event, Nikita Tregubov and Vladislav Semenov, both tested positive for COVID and will not compete.
Women’s Skeleton
Like the 2021/2022 World Cup season as a whole, expect the women’s skeleton race to be relatively wide open. In the test event in October, seven nations took up the top ten spots, with top pushers only constituting for two of those spots. Germany finished one-two-four, with World Champion Tina Hermann just .04 ahead of teammate Hannah Neise. Elena Nikitina finished third in that event.
World Cup champion Kimberley Bos is sliding better than she ever has been and will expect to contend, but otherwise it could be most anyone’s race. Olympic veterans Jacqueline Lölling, Anna Fernstädt, and Janine Flock all will likely linger around the medals, but the test event saw outsiders like Nicole Silveira and Engija Terauda solidly in the top ten as well.
The United States’ Katie Uhlaender finished that test event in fifth place and since then has been slowly building her form back and will expect to be in contention. Teammate Kelly Curis will make her Olympic debut for the Americans.
Jane Channell and Mimi Rahneva will look to better their 2018 Olympic finishes of tenth and 12th. Both women have been sliding very well coming into Beijing.
Like the men, the British women have struggled to find pace over the course of the season. Olympic bronze medalist Laura Deas has appeared to be sliding very well, but has had absolutely no pace all season long. If the Brits can fix that, she’ll be a contender.
Two-Man Bobsled
The question in two-man bobsled isn’t “Will Francesco Friedrich contend for a gold” but more “Will he run away with it or will someone step up and contend?”
As good as Francesco Friedrich was going into 2018, he’s somehow gotten far better over the last four years. In that time he’s broken every gold medal record imaginable and now sits alone as the greatest bobsled pilot of all time. The race is entirely his to lose.
So with all of that said, who can beat him? It will likely be up to the trio of 2018 co-gold medalist Justin Kripps, Brad Hall, and Rostislav Gaitiukevich. All three men have hung with Friedrich throughout the season, and while Friedrich did win seven of the eight two-man gold medals, those three were perpetually in the medal hunt and all finished in the top four in the Yanqing test event.
Since the 2018 Olympics, Latvia’s Oskars Kibermanis has come up as one of the top stars of the sport. However, this season he has struggled to find speed. If he can get the pace back in his sled he’ll look to contend.
The United States will send out Hunter Church and Frank Del Duca, and while neither have seen the track in Yanqing both have had moments of brilliance over the season and will try to long-shot their way into medal contention.
Chris Spring will take part in his fourth Olympics and is sliding better now than he has in the past few seasons. Spring could have an outside shot at a medal if things go his way. Teammate Taylor Austin will make his first Olympic appearance after sliding well for years on the North American Cup circuit.
Four-Man Bobsled
Everything we talked about in two-man bobsled? The same basically goes for four-man bobsled. However, Austria’s Benjamin Maier will most certainly be a contender for medals in the four-man event and you can expect Russia’s Maxim Andrianov to linger around as well. Germany’s Johannes Lochner, who has always done just a bit better in four-man, will also likely be hanging around a potential podium.
Hunter Church, fresh off a four-man medal in Winterberg and a race-quickest push with his team in St. Moritz will look to crash the party.
Two-Woman Bobsled
Every indication is that this should be a heck of a race between a bunch of young stars versus some long time veterans.
On one side you have athletes making their first appearance in the Olympics as pilots, including Germany’s Laura Nolte and Kim Kalicki, and Canada’s Cynthia Appiah and Melissa Lotholz. On the other side there’s the entire 2018 Olympic podium in Mariama Jamanka, Elana Meyers Taylor and Kaillie Humphries, as well as Canada’s Christine de Bruin.
Not to be counted out are the two Chinese women’s bobsledders in Mingming Huai and Qing Ying, who have both showed they could be contenders given the right conditions, and home track advantage is always a great condition.
Also looking to break up that party amongst the favorites will be Andreea Grecu, who finished in fourth in the test event in October, and 2020/2021 World Cup champion Kati Beierl.
Women’s Monobob
Monobob is the new event in the Olympics. In the test event in Yanqing, defending two-woman champion Mariama Jamanka won the race, but then struggled throughout the World Cup season. Melanie Hasler also struggled in Monobob during the World Cup season after finishing on the podium in Yanqing to start the season.
Canadians Cynthia Appiah and Christine de Bruin and Americans Elana Meyers Taylor and Kaillie Humphries all slid well in then Yanqing test event and carried that success over the course of the World Cup season, while Laura Nolte couldn’t quite match her two-woman success but has still been strong in the Monobob.
Australia’s Breeana Walker was picked over Ashleigh Walker based off of her Monobob success in Winterberg and Igls, and will look to match that success in Yanqing.