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Anna Berreiter and Natalie Geisenberger
Photo: EDGAR SU / REUTERS
The fourth day at the Olympic Winter Games in Beijing brought the third German gold medal.
The irregular suits of the ski jumpers in the mixed competition continue to heat up tempers.
And in biathlon, a missed shot prevented Benedikt Doll from winning a silver medal.
After Johannes Ludwig in luge and Denise Hermann in biathlon, the German Olympic team now has a third Beijing Olympic champion:
Natalie Geisenberger
won her fifth Olympic gold in
luge.
After four runs, the record world champion prevailed over her teammate Anna Berreiter, who immediately won silver in her Olympic debut.
Bronze went to Tatyana Ivanova of Russia.
World champion Julia Taubitz clearly missed the podium after her fall the day before in seventh place.
By winning gold medals, Geisenberger drew level with Claudia Pechstein, the most successful German winter Olympian to date.
In the team relay on Thursday, she can now even secure the sole record ahead of the speed skater.
Geisenberger, who became a mother for the first time in 2020 and fought her way back to the top of the world, dedicated the victory to her loved ones: "I wouldn't have made it without my family."
In the German
biathlon team
, Denise Herrmann didn't get a second look one day after the gold medal: In the men's individual race, Benedikt Doll had a chance for the podium, but his second missed shot in the final standing stage deprived him of a possible silver medal.
Doll ended up sixth, with Frenchman Quentin Fillon Maillet taking the win ahead of Anton Smolski from Belarus and Norway's star Johannes Thingnes Bø.
Ski racer Matthias Mayer made history with his victory in the Super-G: Mayer is
the first man to win a gold medal in three consecutive games
.
The 31-year-old won the downhill in Sochi in 2014 and also the Super-G in Pyeongchang in 2018.
Before Mayer, the Italian Deborah Compagnoni had achieved this feat: she won the Super-G in Albertville in 1992, the giant slalom in Lillehammer in 1994 and in Nagano in 1998.
The drama about the
ski suits in the mixed ski jumping competition
was still an issue on Tuesday.
The attempts by jumpers from the top nations Austria, Japan, Norway and Germany had been declared invalid because of irregular suits.
»That was a disaster!«, said the longtime ski jumping material controller Joseph Gratzer.
One of those involved denied the blame: "It was my hardest day in ten years as a materials controller," said Agnieszka Baczkowska: "But I have to make sure that everyone has the same opportunities, because it's about justice."
Snowboarder
Ramona Hofmeister
, who competed as a gold medalist in the parallel slalom but dropped out in the quarterfinals, had a disappointing afternoon.
»I'm very disappointed, my dream of a medal was shattered.
Maybe today just wasn't my day," said Hofmeister.
In addition, Hofmeister had
lost her mobile phone in
the meantime - but then found it again.
At least that.
All competitions of the day at a glance can be found here.
bka