Whistler (pps) At the Vancouver Olympic Winter Games Andreas Linger/Wolfgang Linger repeated the Olympic victory they had won at the 2006 Games at Torino and claimed the first Gold medal for their home country Austria at the Whistler Sliding Center.
The Tyrolean brothers finished the two run race with a total time of 1:22.705 minutes and opened up a gap of 0.265 seconds on the Latvian brothers Andris Sics/Juris Sics who claimed Silver. In the very last race before their retirement the 2002 Olympic Champions Patric Leitner/Alexander Resch from Germany took Bronze at 0.335 seconds behind the winners.
Similar to Hans Rinn/Norbert Hahn (1976 and 1980) the Linger brothers got the second consecutive Gold medal under their belt. Andreas Linger had carried the Austrian flag at the Opening ceremony.
>br> Christian Oberstolz/Patrick Gruber turned fourth and came away empty-handed, similar to four years ago. Andre Florschütz/Torsten Wustlich from Germany went fifth place ahead Christian Niccum/Daniel Joye from the USA. Compared to Torino in 2006 the Canadians Chris Moffat/Mike Moffat improved their result by two rankswith finishing seventh.
QUOTES
Andreas Linger (AUT / 2006 and 2010 Olympic Champion, 2003 World Champion, 2010 European Champion)
„You definitely have to enjoy such a success. Especially if you think about what happened over the last couple of day, the fight for hundreds or thousands of a second is not that important anymore. There are some simple things to become more important: Health for example.“
Patric Leitner (GER / 2002 Olympic Champion, 2010 Olympic Bronze medalist, 1999, 2000, 2004 and 2007 World Champion)
„I’m not going to slide even one more meter. My nerves would not stand that.“ >br>
Andris Sics (LAT / 2010 Olympic Silver medalist, 2008 and 2010 European Champion in Team Relay, 2008 Bronze medalist in Team Relay at the World Chamionships)
„When I saw rank one indicated on the scorebored as we got tot he finish I knew we had won silver. This feels like a dream and I hope I am not going to wake up to quickly. It is unbelievable.“
