Oberhof (pps) On the artificially refrigerated track in Oberhof, Germany’s luge team celebrated its second victory this season in front of a home-crowd. The quartet with Natalie Geisenberger, Felix Loch and Toni Eggert-Sascha Benecken won the event beeing 1.293 seconds ahead of Italy’s Sandra Gasparini, David Mair and Christian Oberstolz-Patrick Gruber. Just as in the past four World Cup events, the Russian team with Alexandra Rodionova, Viktor Kneyb and Vladislav Yuzhakov-Vladimir Machnutin (1.374 seconds behind), finished in fourth position.

Germany (370 points) thus extended its lead by 75 points in the overall Viessmann Luge World Cup rankings on Canada (295 points) that won the season’s opener but only earned a fourth place in Oberhof. Russia holds third place with 280 points to their credit.