Team Germany has won gold in Karting Slalom at the 2022 FIA Motorsport Games thanks to a superb display from its young duo of Annika Spielberger and Sebastian Romberg.
Germany beat Hungary in the day's opening quarter-final match-up, but the Hungarians made the favourites work for it and ultimately finished just 11.8s in arrears.
Local rivals Belgium and the Netherlands faced off in what proved to be the closest quarter-final, with the Belgian duo of Romy De Groot and Dario Pemov taking it by only 9.5s. Estonia dispatched Georgia by a margin of 48.1s, while Poland beat its neighbour Ukraine by 46.3s.
Any notion that Germany might miss out on the gold medal contest was dispelled by a resounding semi-final victory over Estonia, with Romberg and Spielberger taking the duel by almost half a minute. As expected they were joined by the impressive Belgians, who saw off Poland by a margin of four seconds to book a place in the deciding run.
Before that, the Poles went up against the Estonians to compete for the bronze medal. Though Estonia's Jurgen Laansoo was fastest of all, a more consistent performance from the duo of Karol Krol and Emilia Rotko earned Poland its second bronze of the 2022 FIA Motorsport Games.
This just left the final, where Romberg was quickest of all for Team Germany with a total time of 1m21.324s. Pemov was second for Belgium on raw pace, but he incurred three penalties for hitting cones. With Spielberger as consistent as ever, Germany's victory was relatively comfortable as they secured the gold by a margin of 16.7s.
