Germany's Max Langenhan wins Olympic men's singles luge gold, with dominating performance

Langenhan — a two-time defending World Cup overall champion from Germany who feared that he would have to withdraw from the men's singles competition in Cortina because of serious neck pain — became his country's latest Olympic luge champion on Sunday night by holding off Austria's Jonas Mueller and Italy's Dominik Fischnaller for the first of the 12 sliding gold medals to be awarded in these games.

“This thing’s really heavy, and I still have neck pain," Langenhan said. "And I think I’m getting more neck pain with having this on my neck.”

He finished four runs over two days in 3 minutes, 31.191 seconds. Mueller was second in 3:31.787 and Fischnaller got his second consecutive Olympic men's singles bronze medal by finishing in 3:32:125.

Langenhan posted the fourth-biggest winning margin in Olympic men's singles luge history.

USA Luge was paced by Jonny Gustafson, who finished 11th, while Olympic rookie Matthew Greiner was 20th for the Americans.

Among other notables: two-time Olympic gold medalist and current World Cup leader Felix Loch of Germany was sixth and Austria's Wolfgang Kindl — the only luge athlete in these Olympics competing in both singles and doubles — was eighth.

There's something fitting about Germany, Austria and Italy ending up on the medal stand. They're the only nations to ever win gold in men's singles at the Olympics — with Germany far, far, far ahead of the rest of that pack.

Germany — by various names — now has 12 of the 17 Olympic men's singles all-time luge gold medals. Italy has three, Austria the other two. That's it, even with all other nations spending more than a half-century chasing those three European sliding juggernauts.

Langenhan is the ninth German man to win the singles Olympic gold, and he beat serious contenders for this title. Mueller won the test event at Cortina's rebuilt Eugenio Monti track in November, while Fischnaller — the husband of longtime USA Luge women's star Emily Fischnaller, formerly Emily Sweeney — had the edge of being at home and was trying to match Armin Zoeggeler's feat from Turin 2006 and claim gold on Italian ice.

Dominik Fischnaller was mobbed by Italian sliders, all in white puffy coats, as he crossed the finish line. There was one blue coat jumping around in that mass hug as well; that would be his wife, who was wearing her U.S. colors for the occasion.

“It's so important for us, that we start this with a medal,” Dominik Fischnaller said.

The women's singles event starts Monday and finishes Tuesday. The men's doubles event is Wednesday, as is the women's doubles race — which is making its Olympic debut. And on Thursday, the team relay concludes the luge slate at these Olympics.

AP Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/milan-cortina-2026-winter-olympics