Olympics: Resch and Leitner hold off Americans
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Your support makes all the difference.Germany's two-time world champions Patric-Fritz Leitner and Alexander Resch took the men's doubles luge at the Winter Olympics yesterday.
The two overcame a blunder on their second and final run, clipping a wall, to hold off the American teams of Mark Grimette and Brian Martin, and Chris Thorpe and Clay Ives. The Germans had laid the foundations for their win by setting a track record with their first run of 42.953 seconds.
The event went into the history books as the first time a father and son had competed in the discipline. Werner Hoeger, 48, and his son Christopher, 17, are representing Venezuela. The duo hold Venezuelan nationality, but live in Boise, Idaho.
Looking fresh-faced and deceptively frail, the double gold medallist Simon Ammann emerged from comparative obscurity into the world of the instant celebrity on Thursday.
The day after clinching only the second K120 and K90 Olympic double, the 20-year-old Swiss ski-jumper found himself with no time to savour his breathtaking performances, with the American media more than anxious to help him celebrate.
After waking to see his picture on the front page of The New York Times, Ammann was invited to appear on The Late Show with David Letterman and the show's arch-rival The Tonight Show with Jay Leno.
Ammann, though, said he had no wish to become a star. "I'm simply a member of the Swiss team," he said. "I try to do my best for the team. It's very, very reassuring for me to come back to the team.
"I have been compared a great deal with Harry Potter," he said. "But I must confess that I don't think there was any fairy waving a wand over me."
An invitation to compare himself with the British ski-jumper Eddie "The Eagle" Edwards, who attained fleeting fame for his ineptitude at the 1988 Calgary Olympics, was elegantly dismissed.
"I think he was before my time," Ammann said. "I only know him by name but I know that he had glasses that were three times thicker than mine. I also know that he jumped three times less than I did."
A question about the flying Finn Matti Nykänen evoked more enthusiasm. Nykänen, despite frequently threatening to self-destruct through his love of liquor and volatile temperament, is the only other man to have completed the same Olympic double. "It's really unbelievable to be put on the same pedestal," he said.
Ammann's boyish enthusiasm came to the fore when he was invited to describe his love of ski-jumping. "The idea of flying is extraordinary. You don't really need any extra assistance, you don't need a parachute or anything. You are just taking off."
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