Yahoo Sports 
Canada says Russia tampered with luge track to boost medal chances
Strings being pulled to benefit Russia at the Olympics? That's never happened, except for that one time, that other time and all the other times.
Canada being allegedly done out of a bronze medal in the luge team relay on Thursday likely isn't as media-friendly as Skategate a dozen years ago in Salt Lake City. A brief refresher: corrupt judging briefly denied Jamie Salé and David Pelletier the pairs gold; eventually the IOC took a half-measure by awarding the Canadian pair a second gold but letting Russia keep its ill-gotten gold. Nevertheless, Canada coach Wolfgang Staudinger, noting the luge team was in, "silver at the top but the further we went down the slower we got and that’s a clear sign that the track slowed down dramatically," is saying the luge track was warmed at specific times, specifically to benefit Russia. Part of his case is a belief that Russia tanked a World Cup race in order to stay out of the group that went down the track at the end of the event.
From Kerry Gillespie:
Part of why Staudinger thinks the Russians were determined to give their team an advantage is what happened just before the Olympics.
The Russians made sure they were out of the top-five seeded group — which drew for their starts at the end — by withdrawing [Albert] Demchenko [who performed to men's singles leg of the relay] from the final World Cup race of the season.
“For me, that was already a red flag,” Staudinger said.
That dropped them in the rankings so the Russians became the last unseeded team here.
They slid seventh while the top five ranked teams, including Canada, drew for the final places.
Canada drew a particularly bad start, winding up 11th of 12 sleds.
The German team, which went down right before the Canadians, managed to set a track record.
But that doesn’t change Staudinger’s view that the track slowed down.
“The Germans are so strong they can overcome a handicap like this,” he said, noting that they won by a second, when one and a half seconds over the field is more normal for them.
“I’m not looking for an excuse, I’m just looking at facts,” he said. (Toronto Star)
Canada is not planning to lodge a protest; the IOC has challenged Staudinger, et al., to prove there was skulduggery.
IOC official Gilbert Felli said Staudinger should "let it go" unless he can prove there was wrongding.
"If he has some proof or some argument then he has to put his process to the luge federations, then they will make investigations, and then after it will follow the process," Felli said when asked about the accusations during the IOC's daily press briefing. "So far it is the first time I have heard that from last night's competitions, but as you know in every competition you always have people believing that people have tricks, and I think they should let it go unless they have proof and someone can bring proof to any wrongdoing."(The Canadian Press)
There was a little luck of the draw involved with Canada being the penultimate team to go down the track, granted. But Staudinger, with backing from the Canadian Luge Association, says the track got warmer, which made the track relatively sluggish.
From Cathal Kelly:
Piping runs underneath the luge track. Staudinger is suggesting that the temperature of the track was raised between the time the Russians and their major competitors slid, slowing the track considerably.
At 8 p.m., as the race was starting, the track temperature was -2.7C.
By 9 p.m., just as the final sleds, including the Canadians, were going, the temperature had risen considerably, to -1.9C.
While the track temperature was rising, the air temperature was dropping – from 8C to 7C. (Toronto Star)
(For what it is worth, here's a layperson observation you can probably disregard. Those TV 'explainer' segments often say lugers reach speeds exceeding 90 miles/144 km per hour. While sneaking peeks of a re-air on Thursday while at the gym, I noticed on-screen graphics kept displaying the sliders at the end of the event were only travelling in the high 130s. So there is that.)
There is probably not much point in lodging a protest, but the CLA says it will push to have top-seeded teams put at the front of the queue and, in Kelly's phrasing, "prevent any shenanigans in the boiler room."
Over the decades, Russia and the former Soviet Union have been involved in myriad scandals in basketball, fencing, figure skating and gymnastics. At the 1980 Summer Games, the USSR was accused of opening the Olympic Stadium doors to create a tailwind that would only benefit its jumpers and throwers. It's hard to say for sure what happened, but Wolfgang Staudinger has been in the luge game long enough to know when he should have to courage of his convictions to speak up.
Neate Sager is a writer for Yahoo! Canada Sports. Follow him on Twitter @neatebuzzthenet.
