Olympedia – Singles, Men

Once more, the competitors from East and West Germany divided the medals among them. The strength of the East German team was shown from the fact that the reigning World Champion and 1972 bronze medallist, Wolfram Fiedler, did not make the cut. This left 1973 World Champion Hans Rinn as the clear favourite. But he made a serious error in the first run, putting him 0.6 seconds behind Dettlef Günther, who had been the 1975 European Champion, but had only managed a 7th spot at the World Championships. Günther would also win the 3rd and 4th run, giving him a comfortable lead. Only West German Josef Fendt could seriously challenge him, but even the former World Champion (1970, 1973) had to concede half a second in the final standings.

The unluckiest slider in Innsbruck was without a doubt Huang Liu-Chong. He was actually the best non-European, as shown by his performances in the first and fourth run, but he finished last because of two crashes in the other two runs. Remarkably, he did finish both times, but ended up more than one minute behind the next-to-last luger – a huge gap in luge terms.