Umhausen (ck) - After the first run it was very clear already that this would not be another head-to-head race between the usual top favourites. Only serial winner Patrick Pigneter could cope with the heavy snowfall and took the lead after the first run. But at the end of the day Florian Breitenberger (ITA) was the laughing winner. “Today was just my day. Normally I am not so fond of these soft track conditions, but today everything felt just perfectly fine. Maybe I also managed to optimize my sled adjustments to these conditions,” said Breitenberger after his third career win. “I was not far behind after the first run and who knows how long it will be before I get another chance to win again, so I took full risk and all went well.”
Patrick Pigneter (ITA) enjoyed being second as much as winning. “That´s almost the same, with a time margin of only five hundredths you don´t know anyway where you lost the time. Considering that I had some adjustment problems in the training runs I really cannot complain about my result.” The brothers Thomas and Gerald Kammerlander, local heroes from Umhausen, were fighting for the third spot on the podium. The younger Thomas was ranked third after the first run, but in the end Gerald could take the spot. and Thomas had to settle with the fourth place.

The GERMANPIPE World Cup will meet in Umhausen again in only a few days. Hüttau, where the next stop next week would have been, had to withdraw as a host because of legal problems with land owners along the race track. The organizers could not get their permit to use the track for a World Cup. So – as so many times already – Umhausen jumped in.
The decision about the replacement race for Moscow will be announced within the next days. According to recent negotiations Germany is most likely to hold the World Cup final.
Men (35):
1. Florian BREITENBERGER (ITA), 1:17,45(4), 1:18,22(1), 2:35,67
2. Patrick PIGNETER (ITA), 1:17,30(1), 1:18,42(2), 2:35,72
3. Gerald KAMMERLANDER (AUT), 1:17,64(6), 1:18,69(4), 2:36,33
4. Thomas KAMMERLANDER (AUT), 1:17,40(3), 1:19,01(6), 2:36,41
5. Gernot SCHWAB (AUT), 1:17,98(9), 1:18,61(3), 2:36,59
6. Thomas SCHOPF (AUT), 1:17,35(2), 1:19,39(9), 2:36,74
7. Mathias RAINER (ITA), 1:17,61(5), 1:19,45(10), 2:37,06
8. Robert BATKOWSKI (AUT), 1:18,08(10), 1:19,25(7), 2:37,33
9. Florian BATKOWSKI (AUT), 2:37,56
10. Martin PSENNER (ITA), 2:37,67
11. Hannes CLARA (ITA), 2:37,93
12. Anton BLASBICHLER (ITA), 2:38,19
20. Kaj JOHNSON (CAN), 2:41,55
22. John GIBSON (CAN), 2:42,17
Men:

1. Patrick PIGNETER (ITA) 185
2. Florian BREITENBERGER (ITA) 160
3. Gernot SCHWAB (AUT) 125
4. Anton BLASBICHLER (ITA) 117
5. Gerald KAMMERLANDER (AUT) 112
6. Robert BATKOWSKI (AUT) 92
7. Martin PSENNER (ITA) 91
8. Florian BATKOWSKI (AUT) 89
9. Hannes CLARA (ITA) 66
10.Thomas KAMMERLANDER 60
11. Georg MAURER (GER) 58
11. Björn KIERSPEL 58
13. Marcus GRAUSAM 55
14. Christian WICHAN 53
18. Kaj JOHNSON 44
32. John GIBSON (CAN) 19

Chris Karl

FIL Media Service