Team Relay, Mixed

The luge team relay was on the Olympic programme for the fourth time, and the event had always won by Germany and the German (men’s) double was on the team each time. Tobias Wendl and Tobias Arlt had thus won four consecutive gold medals as an identical team. The gold in Cortina brought them to a total of seven golds and one bronze medal to become the most successful German athletes at the Olympic Winter Games. Wendl and Arlt, both born within two weeks in June 1987 and 38-years-old in Cortina, became the oldest gold medallists in luge of any country. In 2026, for the first time at the Olympics, the luge relay consisted of four legs with the addition of the women’ double.

As the last relay team in the event, the Germans, with individual gold medallists Julia Taubitz and Max Langenhan, Wendl/Arlt and women’s doubles silver medallist Dajana Eitberger and Magdalena Matschina, dominated with the best times on all four legs. In total they beat the well-balanced silver team from Austria by more than half-a-second, reproducing the 1-2 result from Beijing 2022.

The Austrian team consisted of Lisa Schulte, Jonas Müller, and the doubles pairs of Thomas Steu / Wolfgang Kindl and Selina Egle / Lara Kipp. Kindl moved from the singles’ leg to the doubles and Selina followed her sister Madeleine Egle as compared to Beijing. Austria had won bronze (2018) and silver (2022) in the relay before.

The Italian team, consisted of the two gold winning doubles teams, but they had only the third best times in their respective runs. For Italy it was the first medal in this event. Their team roster was Verena Hofer and Dominik Fischnaller in the singles and Emanuel Rieder / Simon Kainzwaldner and Andrea Vötter / Marion Oberhofer in the doubles. Nevertheless, they held on to win bronze with a narrow margin ahead of Latvia and the USA. Behind these five teams there was a gap of almost 3.5 seconds to sixth place.