Innsbruck-Igls (pps) The 40th FIL World Championships in Innsbruck-Igls went down in the history of the International Luge Federation as a trend-setting event. Barely eleven months after the successful World Championships with a total of 15,000 spectators at the foot of the Patscherkofel Mountain, the Austrian Luge Federation, ÖRV, intends to tie up to this great event. The organisers with Austria’s luge legend Markus Prock at the front, are promising great attractions at the upcoming Viessmann Luge World Cup (December 15-16, 2007) with exciting competitions, an exceptionally attractive social programme and free entrance for all luge enthusiasts.

Furthermore, Austria’s top lugers have vigorously campaigned for their sport at the Viessmann Luge World Cup in Winterberg: last Sunday the protégés of the coaches Robert Manzenreiter and René Friedl - Tobias Schiegl-Markus Schiegl, Nina Reithmeyer and Daniel Pfister – claimed the victory in the SUZUKI Team Relay. Additionally, they achieved good results in the Viessmann Luge World Cup event with a second place for the two Schiegl cousins, a fourth rank for Daniel Pfister in the men’s single and a seventh place for Nina Reithmeyer in the women’s single. At the FIL Luge World Championships, Austria’s athletes had captured two medals in front of a home-crowd: a silver medal in the double-seater for Schiegl-Schiegl and a bronze medal in the team competition.

This is why the non-Austrian athletes will be facing strong competition on the 1976 Olympic track. The two-time overall World Cup champion David Moeller of Germany (285 points) is currently heading the rankings by a margin of 40 points. He will be returning to the venue where he claimed his second World Championship title after 2004 in February 2007. Moeller’s team-mate Tatjana Huefner, 2007 World champion, already has two World Cup victories under her belt. Due to a disappointing tenth place at the World Cup opener in Lake Placid, USA, 24-year-old Huefner is now 19 points behind the leading Silke Kraushaar-Pielach of Germany in the overall rankings of the Viessmann Luge World Cup. At the past two World Cup events in Calgary and Winterberg, defending champion Kraushaar-Pielach, 1998 Olympic and 2004 World champion, has been struggling in vain to achieve one more win to join Sylke Otto (37 wins) for the most-career series victories.

Germany’s Patrick Leitner-Alexander Resch are currently heading the overall World Cup rankings by a margin of just 20 points. Due to a herniated vertebral disc of Patrick Leitner they only achieved a third place in Winterberg behind Italy’s Christian Oberstolz-Patrick Gruber and Schiegl-Schiegl. Thus, Austria will have three strings to their bow with Schiegl-Schiegl, the Olympic doubles’ champions Andreas Linger-Wolfgang Linger, who claimed a victory at the World Cup opener in Lake Placid, as well as the young talents Peter Penz-Georg Fischler, who achieved a bronze medal in the team competition at the 2007 World Championships.