From Berchtesgaden, GER
(February 20, 2024) – On Tuesday, the International Luge Federation released their tentative 2024/2025 World Cup schedule with a traditional nine race schedule plus World Championships weekend.
The season will kick off on the final weekend of November with races November 29-December 1 in Lillehammer. A week later it will move to Igls, with one final race before the new year in Oberhof.
After the traditional Christmas season break, the tour heads over to Sigulda before three more weeks in Germany with stops in Altenberg, Winterberg, and Oberhof again. Winterberg will also be the European Championships.
That second stop in Oberhof concludes the seven races in Europe. From there the tour will travel to Whistler for the 53rd FIL World Championships before flying out to Pyeongchang for the tour’s first race there since the 2018 Winter Olympic Games.
The ninth stop is currently listed as “ASIA – to be announced”, meaning either a second race in South Korea, or a trip up to Yanqing.
Notably absent from the schedule next year are any stops in the United States, or any North American stops for the World Cup schedule. Those, effectively, have been replaced with the two stops in Asia which means Oberhof will have held more World Cup races in the current season and next than the entire continent of North America has over those two seasons.
That said, the inclusion of Pyeongchang on the schedule is a welcome one. The track has hosted the IBSF Intercontinental Cup over the last few seasons prior to that tour’s demise, and put those events on TV with a full broadcast team. While not notated on the released schedule, the assumption would be that the America-Pacific Championships would be held in Pyeongchang.
As with most things in life, this current schedule is still somewhat tentative. It does mean, however, that there’s no expectation that Italy will have a track ready for homologation by the end of next season. If the track in Cortina is to be ready for the Olympics, it will need to have had some sort of test event on it absolutely no later than the beginning of the 2025/2026 season.
While the tour usually has more than its share of German races, over the past few seasons there’s been a real emphasis on spending as much time as possible in the country. Reasons for that always seem to vary, either it’s the COVID season (totally understandable) to production costs (not so understandable) or just something else. But it once again means no home races for any slider who calls Lake Placid or Park City home. But again, it will be nice to let the Koreans have a home race for the first time in forever.
Here’s the schedule, as it stands currently.
FIL Luge 2024/2025 Schedule
Race 1. Lillehammer (Nov. 29 – Dec. 01)
Race 2. Igls (Dec. 06 – Dec. 08)
Race 3. Oberhof (Dec. 13 – Dec. 15)
Race 4. Sigulda (Jan. 03 – Jan. 05)
Race 5. Altenberg (Jan. 10 – Jan 12)
Race 6. Winterberg (Jan. 17 – Jan. 19)*
Race 7. Oberhof (Jan. 24 – Jan. 26)
WCh. Whistler (Feb. 06 – Feb. 08)
Race 8. Pyeongchang (Feb. 14 – Feb. 16)
Race 9. Asia -TBD (Feb. 21 – Feb. 23)
*Denotes European Championships