Latsch (ck) - With a winning margin of almost two seconds Austria´s defending Champion Melanie Batkowski demonstrated that only her young age – she will be 19 tomorrow, February 11th – puts her in the class of juniors. She certainly belongs in the class of the world´s top athletes already. She just proved this once more when a fixation of the runners of her sled broke loose in the first curve in the second run. “I had to brake a lot harder in all the following curves which explains why I was a bit behind in the second run. But I had an excellent third run and could make up for it all”, she said. Dealing with the high expectations does not put additional pressure on her: “This was already the same in Garmisch two years ago, everybody expected me to win, but I can handle this quite well.”
Runner up became Evelyn Lanthaler, who had already quit her career but was motivated for a comeback by her friend: “I had given up the sport already, but my friend Jasmin Goegele talked me into it again. Now I am highly motivated and I came here to win a medal and I am very happy that I succeeded”, said the 16-year-old student who attends the sport school in Mals. In her second run she achieved the fasted time: “I had a perfect run, but then in the third I had some minor mistakes and was just on the brakes too much. But I am totally happy about the result.”
Her team mate and local hero from Laces/Latsch Melanie Schwarz was equally happy with her bronze medal: “I wanted too much in the second run. I heard that my first intermediate time was the same as Batkowski´s and I tried to keep that speed, but then I made too many mistakes. But all together I have to say that the copetition went very well for me.”
Good news came from Kinga Gawlas (SLO) who suffered a broken leg in her severe training crash. The fracture had been taken care of in a surgery which went very well and she will be able to leave hospital in a few days.
After a silver medal in the 2006 Championships, local boy and apple farmer Christian Schwarz (ITA) managed this year to climb the top spot of the podium. “I have always had problems to perform well here in front of my home audience and I am very happy that this time I did really well, but I was nervous as hell. It was so close and I knew it would be difficult, but I also knew that it was my chance today when I saw Hannes Clara´s time in the second run”.
And it was this very second run which cost Hannes Clara the gold medal: “I had problems with my sled. I tried some new adjustments of my runners and in the end it did not last through the run. I am sure that I could have won otherwise”, he said and he was proved right by achieving the fastest times in the first and the third run. Competing in both events, double and single, did not cause him any problems, he said, and will leave Laces/Latsch with two silver medals.
Just in time Austria´s Dominik Wagner made peace with the track. Ranked 6th after the first run, he brought himself back into the competition again. “I have no idea what was wrong. I had problems in the training runs already, was too early in almost all turns which is strange as normally I am doing well on this track.” So his recipe for the second and third runs was to find back to a “normal run”. Apparently this worked well as he achieved the best and second best times in the following runs and so could claim the bronze medal.
Results:
Junior women (18):
1. Melanie BATKOWSKI (AUT), 1:04,78(1), 1:05,31(2), 1:04,53(1), 3:14,62
2. Evelyn LANTHALER (ITA), 1:05,67(3), 1:05,25(1), 1:05,63(3), 3:16,55
3. Melanie SCHWARZ (ITA), 1:05,54(2), 1:05,84(3), 1:05,84(4), 1:05,48(2), 3:16,86
4. Katrin MLADEK (AUT), 1:08,12(8), 1:06,74(4), 1:06,33(4), 3:21,19
5. Alexandra OBRIST (ITA), 1:07,32(4), 1:07,05(5), 1:07,61(8), 3:21,98
6. Jasmin GOEGELE (ITA), 1:07,97(6), 1:07,66(8), 1:07,12(5), 3:22,75
7. Astrid VETTER (AUT), 1:08,01(7), 1:08,12(9), 1:07,47(6), 3:23,60
8. Veronika NACHMANN (GER), 1:08,71(10), 1:07,59(6), 1:08,18(10), 3:24,48
9. Olga SIDOROVA (RUS), 3:24,50
10. Luedmila ASTRAMOVICH (RUS), 3:24,84
11. Nina BUCINEL (SLO), 3:27,03
12. Irma KARISIK (BIH), 3:27,33
Junior men (29):
1. Christian SCHWARZ (ITA), 1:03,93(2), 1:04,21(2), 1:04,16(2), 3:12,30
2. Hannes CLARA (ITA), 1:03,67(1), 1:04,76(5), 1:03,95(1), 3:12,38
3. Dominik WAGNER (AUT), 1:04,90(6), 1:04,15(1), 1:04,16(2), 3:13,21
4. Michael SCHEIKL (AUT), 1:04,57(3), 1:04,60(4), 1:04,35(4), 3:13,52
5. Thomas SCHOPF (AUT), 1:04,68(4), 1:04,53(3), 1:05,12(8), 3:14,33
6. Thomas KAMMERLANDER (AUT), 1:04,82(5), 1:05,47(8), 1:04,62(5), 3:14,91
7. Florian CLARA (ITA), 1:05,15(7), 1:04,80(6), 1:05,04(7), 3:14,99
8. Patrik SALCHER (AUT), 1:05,73(8), 1:05,95(10), 1:05,03(6), 3:16,71
9. Lukas BRUNNER (ITA), 1:05,79(10), 1:05,42(7), 1:06,31(12), 3:17,52
10. Miha MEGLIC (SLO), 1:06,36(12), 1:06,02(11), 1:05,63(9), 3:18,01
11. Thomas WEISS (ITA), 3:18,60
12. Simon RUNGGER (ITA), 3:18,80
13. Christian SCHOPF (AUT), 3:19,16
14. Markus WICHAN (GER), 3:20,10
Chris Karl
FIL Media Service
