WHISTLER, B.C. — Tatjana Huefner roared through the finish line Tuesday afternoon to the jangling of bells and blowing of horns, bounced up the outrun, jumped off her luge sled, raised her arms to the cheering crowd, went down on her knees and kissed the ice.
The 26-year-old from Neuruppin, Germany, won gold in the Olympic luge women’s singles event, her second Olympic medal, to establish herself as the heir to sliding greats Sylke Otto and Silke Kraushaar in a country that reveres and virtually owns the sliding sport.
“I wanted to win here and I’m very happy,” said Huefner, a soldier who spends her off seasons climbing the highest peaks in Europe.
“It’s a dream come true. This is what I’ve worked for for many, many years.”
But it was Austrian slider Nina Reithmayer who drove the ride of her life on the fourth and final run at the Whistler Sliding Centre to capture the silver medal and break the German stranglehold on the podium.
The 25 year-old soldier from Innsbruck won her first Olympic medal. The German women, who have won three of every four medals ever handed out in the event, had swept the podium in the 2002 and 2006 Olympics and were looking for a three-peat in Vancouver.
Reithmayer beat Huefner after the first heat Monday night, but Huefner overtook her in the second and never looked back.
Huefner completed the four heats in a total of 2:46.524, clocking a top speed of 135.8 kmh — a half second ahead of Reithmayer and almost six tenths of a second ahead of teammate and bronze medal winner Natalie Geisenberger of Berchtesgaden.
Tatiana Ivanova of Russia was fourth and Anke Wischnewski of Germany was fifth.
Regan Lauscher of Red Deer, driving in her final race before retiring, was the top Canadian. She was 15th in the 27-sled field. Alex Gough of Calgary was 18th and Meghan Simister of Regina was 25th.
Reithmayer was a surprise finish. Ranked 5th overall coming into the Games, she had a solid but unspectacular year on the World Cup circuit. She never missed the top 10 but also never cracked the top 4.
The gold was expected to be a fight between Geisenberger and Huefner. Between the two, they won every race on the World Cup circuit this season -- five for Huefner and three for Geisenberger.
Nevertheless the 6-foot, blonde-haired, Geisenberger, who is hounded by paparazzi and hobnobs with celebrities in her luge-mad homeland, came away with a medal in her first Games to set herself up as an elite-level contender for the next decade.
Geisenberger’s setback symbolized a competition that was thrown into disarray when Georgian slider Nodar Kumaritashvili crashed and was killed on the final high-speed turn in training Friday .
As media and critics questioned and challenged the peerless speeds being set at the Whistler Centre, officials with the governing body, the International Luge Federation, adjusted the physical makeup of the fatal corner but also took the unprecedented step of moving the traditional start lines down the track for all races.
The men were pushed down to the women’s start line and the women and doubles were in turn pushed a third of the way down the 16-turn course, to the start for juniors and newbies.
The women were used to a long slope off the start where they could paddle on the ice to gain maximum acceleration. But at the junior start there is a sharp hairpin turn left right off the bat. That keeps the kids safe, but for elite athletes it was like training them for years on the Drop of Doom then forcing them to race for Olympic glory on a corkscrew-shaped playground kiddie slide.
Go too fast off the start and the sliders hit the wall and lost momentum. Those who went too slowly missed the wall but had little momentum going down the track.
The result was a standings board that was all out of whack with the World Cup season. American Erin Hamlin from New York State entered the Games as the defending world champion and the only competitor to break the German domination on the World Cup circuit this season (three bronze medals).
She never got untracked and finished 16th.
Meanwhile, Russia’s Ivanova never finished better than ninth all World Cup season, but just missed the Olympic podium by eight-hundredths of a second, about the blink of an eyelash. Ewelina Staszulonek of Poland, the 17th ranked slider in the world, was eighth.
The late changes to the track hammered the Canadian team in its quest to break its medal drought in Olympic luge.
After training for three years on the women’s start, they had to adjust on the fly to the new start.
They couldn’t do it.
“It was a real race but it was not a real start,” said Simister, 23, one of the top three push-starters in the world who lost her advantage at the new start.
“Up in the start it was who could turn their sled on a dime, and I couldn’t do that. Down the track I looked fine. I was flat, I saw myself on TV. I mean, there were little errors here and there, but I’m happy with the way I slid.
“No matter what the clock said I did my best.”
Simister crashed and didn’t finish in Turin in her first Olympics.
Regan Lauscher, 29, pumped her arms over her head as she came up the out-run on the final race of her career.
Ironically, it was her worst Olympic finish: she was 12th in Salt Lake in 2002 and 10th in Turin.
Lauscher said she wasn’t dwelling on what could have been.
“You can’t do that in life. I don’t want to look behind me. I really want to enjoy what’s happened. This race really made everyone grind it out. It made them really find the competitor in them.”
Canadian luge coach Wolfgang Staudinger could barely contain his anger.
“Our world was turned upside down after this tragic event. I’m sad for my athletes,” he said. “They lowered the start height to kids’ starts. Why did they do that? We were never consulted.
“I’m extremely sorry for everybody that has to go through this. It’s a sad step back for the sport of luge.”
The changes were hardest on Gough. The 22-year-old was 20th as a wide-eyed teen in Turin, but now had all the pressure on her shoulders to be the first Canadian to break into the top four.
When she finished 24th after the second heat Monday, she broke down in tears at the finish and had to be consoled by Staudinger. He wrapped a coat around her heaving shoulders.
On Tuesday, she was fatalistic.
“What do you do? It is what it’s going to be,” she said. “None of us ever had a single run ever from corner six — ever. That corner is something you need training at and we just didn’t have it.”