Germany Wins Luge Doubles Gold Medal at 2018 Winter Olympics

German duo Tobias Wendl and Tobias Arlt produced a near-faultless performance to successfully defend their Olympic luge doubles title at Pyeongchang 2018 on Wednesday.

They put together two brilliant runs for a cumulative time of 1 minute, 31.697 seconds to beat the runners-up, Peter Penz and Georg Fischler of Austria, by 0.088 seconds.

They also topped the other German team of Toni Eggert and Sascha Benecken, the world's leading pair who entered the competition as favourites but had to settle for the bronze medal. 

Here is the updated medal table following the action at the Olympic Sliding Centre:

Latvian brothers Andris and Juris Sics, bronze medallists from Sochi 2014, set the early benchmark on the second run on Wednesday as they went into the lead from ninth with a cumulative time of 1:32.442.

Their disappointing opening run of 46.336 meant it was never likely they would be able to hold on to the lead and they were eventually edged out by Austrian duo Thomas Steu and Lorenz Koller.

Eggert and Benecken took the lead to guarantee a bronze medal, having gone third-fastest in the opening run, but it did not look to be enough for gold.

And so it proved as Penz and Fischler claimed silver to wild celebrations at the finish line.

Wendl and Arlt were under huge pressure to produce a gold-medal run, but they were equal to the challenge to successfully defend their title.

They produced a run of 45.877 to add to their opening 45.820 and claim a second successive gold medal.

Hosts South Korea managed an excellent result as Park Jinyong and Cho Jung-myung put together two fine runs of 46.396 and 46.276 for ninth place.