Patrick Pigneter follows his father´s traces 29 years after his father became World Champion Patrick Pigneter (ITA) did the same at the very same track and won the gold medal with his partner Florian Clara. In 1980 Raimund Pigneter had been World Champion with his doubleseater partner Oswald Pörnbacher. Pigneter/Clara were the top contenders for the gold medal, but the way was still not an easy one: “Of course there was a lot of pressure, but we proved that we can handle it well. Yesterday was a bit difficult, today in the first run I was still a bit nervous, but in the second run I was very relaxed and fully focused”, said Pigneter, who has won two gold medals within two days. The dream of the title could have been over in the first turn already, though. “Florian caught the board with his leg and we could have crashed easily.” But the handled the situation well and with this mistake they still achieved the best time in this run. Their second run was a perfect one, so that Schopf/Schopf who were the current leaders were the first to applaud and congratulate: “They deserved the gold medal today!” Christian and Andreas Schopf were fully satisfied with their silver medal: “We did our best and achieved the best possible result”, said Andreas Schopf, who had been World Champion twice (2001 and 2003) together with his cousin Wolfgang. “We saw yesterday already that we are really fast and our time was very close to Pigneter/Clara´s. But we also knew that we would need a good second run to win a medal. We went full speed and all went well and we are happy about our medal.” Very happy were also Andrzej Laszczak/Damian Waniczek (POL) about their third career bronze medal. “We knew it was going to be very tight between us and the Russians, so our adrenaline was pretty high in tbhe second run. We had a few small mistakes, but we were faster than the Russians and we are very, very satisfied”, said the Polish, who had finished fourth many times in their career. This time the unwanted fourth place was left for the – now – former Russian World Champions Pawel Porschnev/Ivan Lazarev. In the women´s event two runs were held today, Saturday. Renate Gietl is in the lead with a tight margin of 18 hundredths of a second. Currently ranked second is Ekatharina Lavrentjeva (RUS) who will try everything to defend her title. The fight for the bronze medal should be one between Renate Kasslatter and local heroine Evelin Lanthaler. After a bad first run Melanie Batkowski is ranked fifth, but more than one second behind the two Italians. In the men´s event only one run is held on Saturday afternoon, the second and third run will be on Sunday. Results: Final Results Doubles: 1. Patrick PIGNETER/Florian CLARA (ITA), 0:58,78(1), 0:58,48(1), 1:57,26 2. Christian SCHOPF/Andreas SCHOPF (AUT), 0:59,04(2), 0:59,01(2), 1:58,05 3. Andrzej LASZCZAK/Damian WANICZEK (POL), 0:59,85(3), 0:59,49(3), 1:59,34 4. Pawel PORSCHNEV/Ivan LAZAREV (RUS), 0:59,98(4), 0:59,74(4), 1:59,72 5. Aleksandr EGOROV/Petr POPOV (RUS), 1:00,53(5), 1:00,80(7), 2:01,33 6. Christoph KNAUDER/Thomas KNAUDER (AUT), 1:00,85(7), 1:00,77(6), 2:01,62 7. Christian SCHATZ/Gerhard MÜHLBACHER (AUT), 2:01,80 8. Thomas WEISS/Andreas LEITER (ITA), 2:02,12 9. Stanislav KOVSHIK/Roman MOLVISTOV (RUS), 2:03,06 10. Pawel SILIN/Iwan RODIN (RUS), 2:04,81 11. Kaj JOHNSON/Greg JONES (CAN), 2:06,97 Women´s Intermediate Ranking after 2/3 runs: 1. Renate GIETL (ITA), 0:56,46(1), 0:56,75(1), 1:53,21 2. Ekatharina LAVRENTJEVA (RUS), 0:56,61(2), 0:56,78(2), 1:53,39 3. Renate KASSLATTER (ITA), 0:56,74(4), 0:57,04(4), 1:53,78 4. Evelin LANTHALER (ITA), 0:56,69(3), 0:57,16(5), 1:53,85 5. Melanie BATKOWSKI (AUT), 0:58,65(10), 0:56,81(3), 1:55,46 6. Tamara SCHWARZ (ITA), 0:57,73(5), 0:58,03(10), 1:55,76 7. Marlies WAGNER (AUT), 0:58,24(6), 0:57,87(6), 1:56,11 8. Michaela MAURER (GER), 0:58,25(7), 0:57,98(8), 1:56,23 9. Julia VETLOVA (RUS) 10. Tina UNTERBERGER (AUT) 11. Katrin MLADEK (AUT) 12. Nina BUCINEL (SLO) ck FIL Media Service