With the fastest time in both runs Russia´s Ekaterina Lavrentjeva prolonged her incredible winning streak with now four wins in as many World Cup races. “This season is just working out fine for me. I am in really good shape, have fantastic material, the weather is terrific, I have won the race, yes, I really feel great”, said Lavrentjeva after the race. Normally she is being chased by the one or the other girl from the strong Italian team, but in the premiere race at the Nitehawk Ski Area the runner up as well as the bronze medallist came from Austria. It has been the best team result for Austrian women in quite a while, which Marlies Wagner, ranked third thinks to know why: “With Ferdinand Hirzegger we have a very experienced trainer, who works a lot with us. We study videos of our run and sit together and discuss what we could improve.” Hirzegger, who has won the overall World Cup back in 1999/2000 winter returned to the World Cup business as Austria´s women´s coach in this season. “I personally liked this track with all the turns from the beginning and feel very well here”, added Wagner. Her 17-year-old team mate Melanie Batkowski has become a familiar name on the podium already. Two weeks ago she became World Junior Champion and is ready for her first World Cup win: “Right now Ekatherina is competing in her own league, but we are getting there,” she promises.
To complete the successful day for Russia Pawel Porschnev/Ivan Lazarev won their race as well. “Our second run has not been very good, we still have to get used to the hard ice in the track”, they said. With their victory today they also took the lead in the overall World Cup. The former leaders were the Austrians Herbert Kögl/Reinhard Beer who had their problems on this track and finished last. “The disappointment is not too big, because by now we know what the problem was. We tried some different types of runnings and so far they all were wrong for that kind of dry and hard ice, but for the next World Cup on Saturday we hope to do much better”, said Herbert Kögl. Even though Christian Schatz/Gerhard (AUT) Mühlberger finished second in today´s race, in the World Cup they fell back from rank two to three. That is because there are three doubles now within the range of only ten points. Schatz/Mühlbacher were generally satisfied with their result but think that they might do even better on Saturday: “It is great that we have two World Cups here, we will try to improve in each run”, said Mühlbacher. Third finished the Polish double with Andrzej Laszczak/Damian Wanicczek. They benefited from their risky testing in the training runs: “For this kind of turns we need special runnings. In the training we took the wrong ones and did really bad, but this was good, we learned a lot from it.” In the men´s competition only the first run was held. Austria´s brand new European Champion leads ahead of the Italians Florian Breitenberger and the overall World Cup leader Patrick Pigneter. The competition will be continued tomorrow, Friday, at 10am with the men´s second run. At 12.30pm the second World Cup will be opened with the first runs of men and women.

Results World Cup I:

Women (11):
1. Ekaterina LAVRENTJEVA (RUS), 1:18,75(1), 1:18,78(1), 2:37,53
2. Melanie BATKOWSKI (AUT), 1:19,40(2), 1:19,81(5), 2:39,24
3. Marlies WAGNER (AUT), 1:19,75(3), 1:19,49(2), 2:39,24
4. Renate GIETL (ITA), 1:20,02(4), 1:19,71(3), 2:39,73
5. Christa GIETL (ITA), 1:20,55(6), 1:19,71(3), 2:40,26
6. Imelda GRUBER (ITA), 1:20,17(5), 1:20,27(6), 2:40,44
11. Melissa JONES (CAN), 1:26,13(11), 1:26,98(11), 2:53,11

Doubles (6):
1. Pawel PORSCHNEV/Ivan LAZAREV (RUS), 1:23,65(1), 1:24,05(1), 2:47,70
2. Christian SCHATZ/Gerhard MÜHLBACHER (AUT), 1:24,30(2), 1:14,42(3), 2:48,72
3. Andrzej LASZCZAK/Damian WANICZEK (POL), 1:25,16(3), 1:24,28(2), 2:49,44
4. Andreas LEITER/Thomas WEISS (ITA), 1:25,32(4), 1:25,15(4), 2:50,47
5. Christian SCHOPF/Andreas SCHOPF (AUT), 1:25,42(5), 1:26,55(6), 2:51,97
6. Reinhard BEER/Herbert KÖGL (AUT), 1:26,28(6), 1:26,35(5), 2:52,63

World Cup Rankings:

Women:
1. Ekatharina LAVRENTJEVA (RUS) 400
2. Renate GIETL (ITA) 300
3. Christa GIETL (ITA) 280
4. Melanie BATKOWSKI (AUT) 275
5. Marlies WAGNER (AUT) 222
6. Imelda GRUBER (ITA) 178
7. Tina UNTERBERGER (AUT) 148
8. Michaela MAURER (GER) 127
9. Julia VETLOVA (RUS) 126
10. Kinga GAWLAS (POL) 124
22. Melissa JONES (CAN) 34

Doubles:
1. Pawel PORSCHNEV/Ivan LAZAREV (RUS) 325
2. Reinhard BEER/Herbert KÖGL (AUT) 320
3. Christian SCHATZ/Gerhard MÜHLBACHER (AUT) 315
4. Andrzej LASZCZAK/Damian WANICZEK (POL) 262
5. Andreas LEITER/Thomas WEISS (ITA) 194
6. Christian SCHOPF/Andreas SCHOPF (AUT) 175
7. Aleksandr EGEROV/Petr POPOV (RUS) 152
8. Denis ALIMOV/Roman MOLISTOV (RUS) 141
9. Galabin BOTZEV/Zlatomir ZDRAVKOV (BUL) 112
10. Günther INNERBICHLER/Alex HOFER (ITA) 85

Chris Karl
FIL Media Service