There were high expectations for the home team in Oberhof; Germany won both the men’s and women’s titles thanks to Moritz Elias Bollmann and Jessica Degenhardt, while Max Ewald and Jakob Jannusch finished second in the doubles luge.

Degenhardt gave the team a solid lead of 0.219 seconds and despite Bollmann running as second-quickest on the men’s leg and the doubles dropping some time, the quartet would win in an accumulative time of 2min 16.409sec.

Their closest competition came from Latvia, with their ace being men’s silver medallist Gints Berzins, who brought the team back into contention while moving further away from the Unite States in third place.

Latvia secured the silver after three legs, 0.120 behind the Germans, but the US did not hold onto the bronze.

Instead, bronze went to Russia, who after a slow start were saved by the lightning-quick doubles duo of Dimitriy Buchnev and Daniil Kilseev, who had earlier won the junior doubles race.

Finishing eighth after the first leg, the Russians progressively got quicker, while the Americans dropped behind to finish fourth.

Buchnev and Kilseev also rode to a comfortable win in the junior doubles with a combined time of 1:17.619.

There was a clear distance between them and second place, with a 0.221 gap appearing to German duo Ewald and Jannusch.

The Germans finished the first run solidly, albeit a distance off the leaders and managed to produce a consistent second run.

Another Russian pair, Mikhail Karnauchov and Iurii Chirva, finished run one on the same time as the Germans but a mistake on the final part of the track took them from what was looking like a silver down to bronze.

But both teams would not run quicker on the second attempt than Americans Sean Hollander and Michael O’Gara, who made up for a big mistake in run one to move themselves up from ninth to sixth with the second-fastest run on run two.

Moritz Jäger and Valentin Steudte of Germany were consistent to finish in fourth.