to digest for the next couple of days the winner his norwegian teammate ola vigen hattestad won with a time of 33839 nimbly avoiding the collision behind him when you fall in the olympics theres not so much chance for a medal gloersen said andi langenhan nancy donaldsonthe new york times somebody has to be fourth and thats me andi langenhan on his fourthplace finish four years ago at the vancouver olympics the german luger andi langenhan placed fifth he was second in the world championships last year propelling him to sochi with hopes to win a medal he arrived with the phrase bitte folgen on his luge its german for please follow the luge field at the sochi games followed his instructions except for three riders langenhan missed a medal by 558thousandths of a second that halfsecond will haunt him for at least the next four years the little man in my head always says go on go on go harder for sure langenhan said after the fourth and final race in the mens singles competition sunday night but i know i can do it all the other guys who are unknown who come to the top 10 can reach a medal for sure and everybody is getting older and knows what to do his countryman felix loch repeated as gold medalist albert demchenko competing in his seventh straight winter games for russia won silver armin zggeler of italy reached the podium for the sixth consecutive games and claimed bronze last year i beat them all so i know i can do it langenhan said but olympic games are always special theyre competitive and hard to win and hard to achieve a medal but at least somebody has to be fourth and thats me he added aksel lund svindal nancy donaldsonthe new york times it is pretty much the worst place to be ive been there before and probably will be again aksel lund svindal on his fourthplace finish twotenths of a second can mean different things to different athletes an upandcomer who lost by such a narrow margin might consider it a symbolic victory and motivation to work harder for aksel lund svindal twotenths of a second represented a bitter defeat in the mens downhill svindal the popular norwegian who won three alpine skiing medals at the last winter olympics and was the world champion in the downhill last year was 19hundredths of a second away from a podium finish it is pretty much the worst place to be svindal said of finishing fourth ive been there before and probably will be again svindal norways flagbearer at the opening ceremony clearly had his sights on the gold medal which went to matthias mayer of austria i made mistakes and i could have won said svindal who was 29hundredths of a second behind mayer svindal said he took some solace in the fact that kjetil jansrud his teammate and roommate at the olympics finished third it saves the day