Eggert/Benecken remain unbeaten in pre-Olympic winter

Whistler (RWH) Toni Eggert and Sascha Benecken remain the men to beat in the doubles. The runners-up in the Königssee World Championships took their fourth victory of the season at the Viessmann Luge World Cup in Whistler, Canada, to extend their unbeaten run in this pre-Olympic winter. The Thuringian duo have now claimed six victories in a row across this and last season to rack up a total of 20 career wins.

The Olympic Champions and three-time World Champions Tobias Wendl/Tobias Arlt (GER) took second place. Third went to the Austrians Peter Penz/Georg Fischler, who took their first podium of the current winter season. Eggert/Benecken lead the overall standings of the Viessmann World Cup with a perfect score of 400 points ahead of Wendl/Arlt (282) and Robin Geueke/David Gamm (275) from Germany.

All races at the third Viessmann World Cup of the 2016/2017 season were reduced to a single run. The Nations Cup was cancelled entirely and will not be rescheduled. In the doubles event, the first 18 seeded athletes were allowed to start, but a Romanian pairing was excluded for failing to satisfy the minimum requirements in training.

The World Cup entourage now travels as planned to Park City in Utah, USA, where the last event on the calendar before the Christmas break will take place on the 2002 Olympic track. The races are scheduled for 16 and 17 December, and the America-Pacific Championships will also be staged using the race-in-race format.

Quotes

Toni Eggert (GER / World Championship silver medallist 2012, 2013 and 2016):

“This is our fourth straight win of the season, and more if you count back to last year. I’m not one for statistics, but this must be our 20th World Cup victory. Everything is going great for us at the moment. We’re not making many mistakes.”

Tobias Arlt (GER / 2014 Olympic Champion and triple World Champion)

“By and large, we’re pretty pleased. Congratulations to Toni and Penz/Fischler.  Toni is driving really consistently at the moment and not making many mistakes, so we have to raise our game.  But there are still a few races left. We’re focussing on the World Championships in late January, and they’re still a while off yet.”

Georg Fischler (AUT / World Championship silver medallist in 2015 and World Championship Sprint silver medallist in 2016):

“We’ve rarely been so happy to take third place. We finished last season badly with a crash and have found it hard to get going this year. So it’s really good to get on the podium.”