Jonas Müller triumphed at the European Championship. © APA / EXPA/JOHANN GRODER

Records are tumbling in the European Championship title race.

With three new records, Austrian Jonas Müller crowned himself the new European champion in luge at the European Championships in Oberhof.

17 January 2026

From: never

All good things come in threes – in Jonas Müller's case, the saying applies twice. For the third time in a row, the 28-year-old raced to a European Championship gold medal on Saturday afternoon at the World Cup in Oberhof. On his way to a triumph that couldn't have been more decisive, he also broke three records. In the first run, he improved his own start record by 16 thousandths of a second to 7,063 seconds, and in the finish area, he set another new best time with 42,275 seconds. In the second run, he finally surpassed himself, setting yet another track record with a time of 42,274 seconds.

Behind Müller, the two Germans Felix Loch (+0,091) and Max Langenhan (+0,275) secured their silver and bronze medals, respectively. Latvian Kristers Aparjods, after finishing third in the first run, was knocked off the podium. The Italian team was not competing: since Oberhof was no longer part of the qualification process for the Cortina d'Ampezzo Olympics, Dominik Fischnaller and his teammates opted not to participate and instead trained on the Olympic ice track.

Fräbel remains cool, Prock falls far behind.

In the women's competition, Germany's Merle Fräbel successfully defended her lead from the first round and, after winning the U23 European Championship title in 2025, celebrated her gold medal in the senior category. She was followed by Austria's Lisa Schulte (+0,279) and Switzerland's Natalie Maag (+0,281). Hannah Prock from Tyrol had bad luck: after finishing third in the first round, she had a poor start in the final and dropped back to eighth place.