Vatra Dornei (ck) - Unflinchingly, despite a track which became softer and softer with the sun out all day, Patrick Pigneter/Florian Clara (ITA) raced towards their next success, their 24th career win and fourth in the current season. “I like this technically challenging track”, said Pigneter after the race. “We handled the soft track quite well, we already did so in Kindberg. But of course even a margin of two seconds is easily closed”, he said as after the first run the Italians were in first position with a 1.7 second lead. “In the second run the track became even softer and as the rear man I had to be careful not to brake too much”, added Florian Clara. Their win in the overall world cup can only be prevented in theory, but Christian and Andreas Schopf (AUT) did whatever they could to keep the theory alive. However, their real goal was the second spot which they hold in the overall ranking as well as in today’s race. “It was very difficult today. The first place was out of reach anyway, so we tried to attack again in the second run. We changed the steels for the second run, we got a pair from our cousin Thomas who is not participating in the double event here”, the brothers explained how they managed to improve their final rank from three to second. “It is important that we have some gap behind us and we could secure our second position in the overall ranking. Now we can experiment a little bit in the last world cup and try to close the gap between us and Pigneter/Clara.” Junior World and European Champions Christoph Regensburger/Dominik Holzknecht (AUT) qualified for the world cup the first time in this current season and in their first race they claimed a spot on the podium. Ranked fourth after the first run, they managed to outrun Russia’s Aleksandr Egerov/Petr Popov and finished third. “We never would have expected this result before the race”, said Regensburger. “We just tried to give it all in the second run and attack as much as we could and luckily it went well. It was difficult because the track already had some holes and it the second run it was even more extreme.” A first was also that a double from the host country Romania qualified for the world cup: Bogdan Morosan/Alexandru Valcan (ROU) eventually finished tenth. The doubles’ Nation’s Cup was a Russian-Austrian duel with the luckier end for the Austrians. Rupert Brüggler/Tobias Angerer (AUT) finished first ahead of Christian Schatz/Gerhard Mühlbacher (AUT) who will quit their long and successful career at the end of this season. Third became Pavel Silin/Iwan Rodin (RUS). Also the women’s Nations’ Cup saw two Austrians at the top. Marlies Wagner won ahead of Michelle Diepold. Svitlana Kravchuk from Ukraine became third. In the world cup Ekatharina Lavrentjeva (RUS) is perfectly well on track towards her 11th consecutive win. However, she cannot rely on a comfortable leading margin this time, Evelin Lanthaler (ITA) is ranked second only 12 hundredths behind, followed by Greta Pinggera (ITA) and Tina Unterberger (AUT), but those two are more than a second behind. In the men’s qualification junior Dominik Holzknecht upset his fellow Austrians, finished third and claimed a spot in the world cup. Thomas Schopf won the qualification run, so Holzknecht and Schopf will complete the Austrian team of seeded Thomas Kammerlander and Michael Scheikl. For Italy Patrick Pigneter and Hannes Clara are seeded, Alex Gruber and Florian Clara qualified for the two remaining spots. Program for Sunday, 24.02.2013 10am: 1st Competition world cup run men (WC 5) Nations’ Cup men (WC 5) 2nd Competition run world cup women (WC 5) 2nd Competition run world cup men (WC 5) 30 Minutes break, afterwards Team Event (WC 5) 3pm: Medal Ceremonies (WC 5) Intermediate Ranking Women after one Run: 1. Ekatharina LAVRENTJEVA (RUS), 1:14,45(1) 2. Evelin LANTHALER (ITA), 1:14,57(2) 3. Greta PINGGERA (ITA), 1:15,78(3) 4. Tina UNTERBERGER (AUT), 1:16,39(4) 5. Veronika NACHMANN (GER), 1:16,53(5), 6. Liudmila AKSENENKO (RUS), 1:16,84(6) 7. Maria AUER (AUT), 1:17,77(7) 8. Petra DRAGICEVIC (SLO), 1:17,84(8) Final Results Doubles: 1. Patrick PIGNETER/Florian CLARA (ITA), 1:17,13(1), 1:19,34(1), 2:36,47 2. Christian SCHOPF/Andreas SCHOPF (AUT), 1:18,87(3), 1:20,35(2), 2:39,22 3. Christoph REGENSBURGER/Dominik HOLZKNECHT (AUT), 1:18,91(4), 1:20,37(3), 2:39,28 4. Aleksandr EGOROV/Petr POPOV (RUS), 1:18,84(2), 1:20,97(5), 2:39,81 5. Pavel PORSHNEV/Ivan LAZAREV (RUS), 1:19,69(5), 1:20,63(4), 2:40,32 6. Björn KIERSPEL/Christian WICHAN (GER), 1:20,45(6), 1:21,58(6), 2:42,03 7. Andrzej LASZCZAK/Damian WANICZEK (POL), 2:42,83 8. Matic NEMC/Petra DRAGICEVIC (SLO), 2:44,94 9. Maryan HYZNER/Andrii VERCHUK (UKR), 2:53,08 10. Bogdan MOROSAN/Alexandru VALCAN (ROU), 2:59,22 World Cup Ranking (5/6): Doubles: 1. Patrick PIGNETER/Florian CLARA (ITA) 485 points 2. Christian SCHOPF/Andreas SCHOPF (AUT) 395 3. Pavel PORSHNEV/Ivan LAZAREV (RUS) 350 4. Aleksandr EGOROV/Petr POPOV (RUS) 275 5. Hannes CLARA/Stefan GRUBER (ITA) 241 6. Björn KIERSPEL/Christian WICHAN (GER) 235 7. Rupert BRÜGGLER/Tobias ANGERER (AUT) 233 8. Andrzej LASZCZAK/Damian WANICZEK (POL) 222 9. Pavel SILIN/Iwan RODIN (RUS) 174 10. Thomas SCHOPF/Andreas SCHÖPF (AUT) 162