Singles, Men

Although America’s Wendell Suckow scored an upset victory at the 1993 World Championship the consensus was that the two men who had placed first and second at the Albertville Olympics would still be the men to beat at Lillehammer. Olympic champion Georg Hackl of Germany was a consummate championship performer whilst Austria’s Markus Prock had proved his consistency by winning three successive World Cups. The first two runs were taken by Hackl but his lead over Prock was limited to just a hundredth of a second at half way. The third run changed things around as the German could not quite match Prock’s speed and the Austrian rose to the gold medal position, but this was a position he could not hang on to permanently. Prock’s time on the final run was only seventh fastest and the clock stopped to reveal that Hackl had retained his title by a miniscule nine hundreths of a second. Hackl became the first man in history to successfully defend an Olympic singles title. In his first Olympic Games Italian Armin Zöggeler took home the bronze meal. This was a task made considerably easier by the crash that ended the hopes of America’s Duncan Kennedy on the third run.