Singles, Men

Reigning Olympic and World champion Felix Loch of Germany was favourite to retain his title, although the hosts had a contender in the 42 year old veteran of six previous Olympics, Albert Demchenko. After the first run it was Demchenko who led Loch by a margin of 0.015 seconds with veteran Armin Zöggeler of Italy, attempting to win his 6th consecutive Olympic medal, 0.336 seconds off the pace, and Austrian Reinhard Egger, a further 0.058 seconds behind.

The leader board changed after the second run as Loch posted the fastest time, 51.964 seconds, a new track record, to overtake Demchenko by an overall margin of 0.294 seconds, and Zöggeler a further 0.450 second behind. What was striking was that the fourth place athlete after the second run, Andi Langenhan was now over a second slower than his fellow German Loch, a huge margin in the luge where often the results come down to thousandths of a second.

Little changed, other than the margins, in the 3rd and 4th runs, with Loch, Demchenko and Zöggeler being the three fastest in each run (in that order) and extending their lead over the rest of the field. Indeed Loch also set a new track record of 51.613 in his third run. In the final analysis, Loch won in a combined time of 3:27.526, some 0.476 seconds ahead of Demchenko and 1.271 seconds ahead of Zöggeler. Zöggeler’s bronze meant that he became the first person to win a medal in the same event at six successive Winter Olympics and was the first time the feat had been achieved in an individual event in the entire history of the Olympic Games.

Further down the field was a much more exotic competitor. An attempt by a Tongan, Fuahea Semi, to qualify for the Winter Games was exploited by a German underwear firm called Bruno Banani as part of a marketing ploy. Semi legally changed his name to that of the company, although at first this was passed off as a coincidence, and narrowly missed qualification for the Vancouver Games. By 2014 he had improved enough to comfortably reach Sochi and competed without mishap during the Games. He placed 32nd and defeated competitors from a number of well-established winter sports countries.

In May 2016 WADA (World Anti-Doping Agency) commissioned a report, the McLaren Report, to look into allegations of systematic Russian doping and a cover-up to avoid positives at the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics. The report was released in two parts, in July and December 2016, and confirmed the allegations. In 2017 the IOC formed a commission to investigate this, headed by IOC Member Denis Oswald, and usually referred to as the Oswald Commission. In late October 2017 the Oswald Commission began to release its findings.

On 22 December 2017 silver medalist Albert Demchenko was disqualified as a result of the Oswald Commission findings. Demchenko immediately appealed this ruling to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), and about 10 days before the PyeongChang Winter Olympics began, the CAS reached a decision and Demchenko was exonerated and his silver medal was restored.