KÜHTAI Exciting races, tight decisions and a dominating female athlete -  that's the breaking news after the start of the FIL Luge World Cup on Natural Track in Kühtai (AUT).


The second race day started with a home victory for Austria: The final in the doubles‘ race was scheduled for Sunday morning. After the first run on Saturday afternoon defending winner Patrick Pigneter / Florian Clara (ITA) shared the leading position with the World Champions Rupert Brüggler / Tobias Angerer (AUT). In the final, the local heroes finished an epic run with the time of 29.91 seconds (the only startes below 30 seconds), Pigneter / Clara pushed really hard and finished second. Porshnev / Lazarev (RUS) had the second fastest time in the finals, knocking out their team-mates Egorov / Popov from the podium.

A real thriller was the men‘s single race: Defending champion Thomas Kammerlander (AUT) was in the lead after the first run, with Patrick Pigneter (ITA) finishing second and on third position World Champion Alex Gruber (ITA). In the second run two lugers set a new track record: Austrias Florian Glatzl (4th place after run 1) set a new track record and was the new leader. But Alex Gruber (3rd place after run 1) fixed the next new track record (28.31 seconds) which was the one-way-ticket to the leaderbox. Pigneter struggled in the 2nd run and even Kammerlander was not able to knock out Gruber. Kammerlander finished in second place, just 0.03 seconds behind Gruber, and Pigneter even finished on 4th position behind Florian Glatzl. Noteworthy: The first four lugers are separated by only 0.08 seconds!

Evelin Lanthaler (ITA) dominated both training runs on Saturday and she stepped into the competion the same way, finishing the 1st run in the lead. Defending champion Greta Pinggera (ITA) was 2nd, Alexandra Pfattner (ITA) 3rd. In the final Tina Unterberger (AUT) finished on 3rd position, Pinggera finished 2nd and Lanthaler fixed her 1st victory in Kühtai.

Italy won the Team Competetion (Evelin Lanthaler / Florian Clara / Alex Gruber), Austria finished 2nd (Tina Unterberger / Michael Scheikl / Thomas Kammerlander), on 3rd place Russia (Ekaterina Lavrenteva / Aleksandr Egorov / GrigoryBukin). The Nations Cup men's single winner was Fabian Achenrainer (AUT), followed by Bernd Neurauter (AUT) on 2nd position and Florian Haselrieder (ITA) 3rd.

 

The quotes:
Tobias Angerer (Winner doubles with Rupert Brüggler): "We had little problems in the first run, in the second run we implemented everything we had planned for. It's a great start of the new season and our first home win. An incredible beginning of our farewell tour, because actually Rupert and I wanted to retire last summer. Then we decided to finish our career with a farewell tour! "


Alex Gruber (winner men’s single): "In the first run I could do better, the second run was really great. In the final I prefer being the hunter and not to be hunted, because this way I have no pressure. The race was extremely exciting and in the end I was just luckier. Often I had bad luck with the hundredths of a second in the past. "


Evelin Lanthaler (winner women): "I was very nervous today before the race. Due to the snowstorm the visibility on track was very bad. The track has many corners and is really competitive. But it's a perfect start of the World Cup season, my first victory in Kühtai and also my first victory at the beginning of a season. "


Thomas Kammerlander (2nd place men’s single, 2nd place Team Competition): "It was a very difficult race, and typical for Kühtai a very close race. I'm happy with my performance, if you start the new season with a podium then you have to be satisfied. "


Tina Unterberger (3rd place women, 2nd place Team Competition): "Two podiums at the season opener are great, but Kühtai is always very exhausting for me. "