Singles, Women

As in the men’s event, a German was the outstanding favourite, namely world champion Natalie Geisenberger. Geisenberger’s dominance of the sport was such that she won 15 of the 19 races she had contested over last two seasons and had never placed outside the top two. She set the standard on the first run with the only time below 50 seconds (49.891), comfortably ahead of American Erin Hamlin , reigning champion Tatjana Hüfner and Tatyana Ivanova of Russia. In the second run Hamlin and Hüfner changed places, although Geisenberger was dominant, again posting the only sub-50 second time (49.923) to lead by a large margin (by luge standards) of 0.766 seconds over her countrywoman. Ivanova had a disappointing run to push her down to 7th but, also for the home nation, Nataliya Khoreva was fourth fastest and moved up to 4th place.

The third and fourth runs were more of the same, Geisenberger, Hüfner and Hamlin setting the three fastest times in each run and finally finishing in that order. Again Geisenberger went under 50 seconds in her third run (49.765) and, by her standards, had a conservative fourth run of 50.189. Her margin of victory over second placed Hüfner was a staggering (by luge standards) 1.139 seconds, with the American a further 0.238 second behind. For Hamlin, this was the first ever medal won by a woman luger from the United States.

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 Tatyana Ivanova, the original seventh-place finisher, was disqualified as a result of the Oswald Commission findings.