Local hero Loch: “It’s about time to win here”
Koenigssee (pps) Germany’s men dominated the past three events of the Viessmann Luge World Cup series. With Olympic champion Felix Loch, winner in Innsbruck-Igls and Whistler, David Moeller, who stood on the podium in all three races, and Andi Langenhan, who celebrated a victory in Calgary, three protegées of Germany’s head coach Norbert Loch are heading the overall rankings (“That’s unprecedented”). But as the New Year starts with the fourth World Cup stop on the track in Koenigssee the upcoming event will be a veritable challenge for Loch, Moeller & Co.
For ten years now, the men’s lugers of the German Bobsleigh and Sled Sports Federation (BSD) are waiting to celebrate a victory in front of a home-crowd on the world-wide oldest artificially refrigerated track. The last to do so was Georg Hackl in the 2001-2002 season. After that it was either Italy’s two-time Olympic champion Armin Zoeggeler or Albert Demchenko of Russia who won the event (four victories each).
Now, local hero Loch intends to end the 10-year “draught”. “It’s about time to celebrate a World Cup victory ‘at home’. I want to finally win here,” said the two-time World Champion. And with the three first World Cup victories in mind Olympic silver medallist David Moeller added: “We have three home ‘matches’ ahead of us, starting with the one in Koenigssee. Of course we hope to continue our good performances of the past races.”
In the women’s singles Canadian Alex Gough, who celebrated her second World Cup victory back home in Calgary, is becoming more and more a serious contender to Germany’s women. Already last year the 24-year-old took a third place finish in Koenigssee, only five weeks later Gough then ended the winning series of Germany’s women after 105 consecutive victories. “Now, Alex has to give evidence of her progress,” said Canada’s head coach Wolfgang Staudinger. But for all that, neither Olympic and World Champion Tatjana Huefner, who won the season opener in Innsbruck-Igls, nor Olympic bronze medallist Natalie Geisenberger (both of Germany), who took the top spot on the podium in Whistler, intend to make life easy for Gough. By the way – Geisenberger celebrated her only World Cup victory in Koenigssee last year.
Two Austrian teams are currently dominating the doubles. Even though Peter Penz-Georg Fischler won the season-opener in Innsbruck-Igls and failed to win a second World Cup due to a mistake in their first run, the former junior World Champions are still on second place in the overall rankings behind compatriots and Olympic Champions Andreas Linger-Wolfgang Linger, who took the podium’s top spot in Whistler. Tobias Wendl-Tobias Arlt of Germany, local heroes and currently on third place, appear to be bent on repeating last year’s course of the season when they started into the series with a fourth place in Innsbruck-Igls and then went on to win in Calgary. Eventually, they took the overall World Cup. “Well, if we want to do that again we need to win again in Koenigsee,” said Tobias Wendl.
