Leitner/Resch ahead of Florschütz/Wustlich and Grimmette/Martin
Calgary (pps) After the triple victory of the German women, there was a German double victory in the doubles competition today: The two-times World Champions Patric Leitner/Alexander Resch weeded out her fifth rank at the World Championships and won at the first Viessmann World Cup in Calgary with 1:28,644 minutes ahead of Andre Florschütz/Torsten Wustlich (1:28,830), their successors to the World Championships title. Mark Grimmette/Brian Martin (1:28,863) from the USA finished third. The fourth rank surprisingly went to Chris Moffat/Eric Pothier (1:29,079) from Canada, while the silver medallists at the World Championships Steffen Skel/Steffen Wöller (Germany) messed up their first run, after which they were placed eleventh, and in the end were placed fifth (1:29,111) due to best time in the second run.
In the first run, Leitner/Resch, World Champions in 1999 and 2000, had imrpoved the track record held by Florschütz/Wustlich to 44.186 seconds.
Quotes:
Patric Leitner (Germany), two-times World Champion:
„This was an extremely important race for us. This success had taken a lot of pressure from us. The competition in doubles is increasing all the time, there are more and more great athletes at the top. It was an advantage not to have started at the Challenge Cup the previous day. In the past winter in La Plagne, we were also out of this competition and afterwards won the World Cup race.“
Andre Florschütz (Germany) World Champion:
„I am very happy with my second rank. We know that we are in great form and have prepared well.“
Mark Grimmette (USA) Olympic Bronze medallist:
„We are on the right way. This race has shown that the number of top athletes in doubles is increasing. Besides the Germans, Austrian and Italians, the Canadians are now also among the top. We are going to see an exciting season with very close races.“
