Hunters and hunted at Kühtai

Kühtai (PMA) - On Sunday the parallel race at Kühtai will start the season for Men's and Women's Singles. Patrick Pigneter (ITA) and Ekaterina Lavrentyeva (RUS) are the title defenders. They won also last years parallel race, but there are a some challengers in the hunt.

One of the dark horses at the Men's competition is the Doubles partner of Patrick Pigneter. Florian Clara was last years runner-up at Kühtai. He is performing well in the fast turns of a parallel track. Their team mates Alex Gruber and Florian Breitenberger finished several times on podium last year, Gruber won at Deutschnofen. The Austrian team is also ready to close the gap between them and Pigneter. Thomas Kammerlander and Michael Scheikl are ready for a win on home soil.

At the Women's event all is waiting for the big duel between Overall World Cup winner Ekaterina Lavrentyeva and current World Champion Evelin Lanthaler from Italy. Last year Lanthaler's room-mate Greta Pinggera was runner-up against Lavrentyeva at Kühtai. This year the young Italian ladies want to win the parallel event. Austrian Tina Unterberger is aiming to finish on podium again. It will be also interesting, how Germany's newcomer of the last season Theresa Maurer is performing, after returning from an injury.