Innsbruck-Igls (pps) Germany’s Olympic champion Felix Loch started into the new season of the Viessman Luge World Cup series celebrating his fifth individual victory. At the season opener in Innsbruck-Igls the two-time World champion thus repeated last year’s success.

Setting up track records in both runs that earned him a winning margin of 0.303 seconds, the 22-year-old defeated team-mate David Moeller as well as the defending overall Viessmann Luge World Cup champion Armin Zoeggeler of Italy (0.357 seconds behind Loch) to second and third place respectively. By the way, the trio with Loch, Moeller and Zoeggeler secured the top spots on the podium at the 2010 Olympic Winter Games in exactly the same order.

On his 40th birthday Russia’s Albert Demchenko, bronze medallist at the 2006 Olympic Winter Games in Turin, Italy, took fifth place behind Johannes Ludwig of Germany. Best Austrian luger was Manuel Pfister on seventh place.

Quotes

Felix Loch

(GER / 2010 Olympic and two-time World champion)

“This was a great start into the new season. It could hardly have been better. Today everything just worked out perfectly. Right at the beginning of the week I decided to compete with last year’s luge model because the new one is not yet ready.”

David Moeller

(GER / Olympic silver medallist and two-time World champion)

“I’m very pleased. Due to its matt grey colour I’ve baptised my new luge ‚Mustang’. And I have to admit that at the exit of curve nine in my first run it really lived up to its name. But for all that everything’s fine with the material and this is a good basis for the upcoming events.” Armin Zoeggeler

(ITA / two-time Olympic as well as six-time World champion)

“I’m pleased. At the moment, Felix Loch is simply in a great shape. Compared to the German lugers I lose too much ground at the start. Even though I manage to catch up a bit in the lower part of the track it’s not enough.”