St. Sebastian - With run times under 50 seconds, which no-one else had been able to achieve, Patrick Pigneter/Florian Clara (ITA) won the gold medal in today´s double seater event. “I did not take anything for granted”, said overall World Cup winner and bronze medallist in the senior´s World Championships Pigneter, “I had no problem to compete here with full motivation”. The double Pigneter/Clara had been disqualified in the Grande Prairie World Championships because of too warm runners (as three more sleds), so they could compensate here by winning the gold medal.
Their team mates Thomas Weiss/Andreas Leiter came second and were happy about their silver medal: “For us it is a great feeling to be on the podium again, we have not been there in quite a while.” Even though they are competing in the World Cup already, they had to settle for results around the top-six, the podium places so far went to more experienced sliders. “Of course our goal is to become regulars in the World Cup and sooner or later to fight for the top-three places”, said Weiss/Leiter.

A first life-sign gave the brothers Simon (15) and Michael (17) Kalchschmid. The Austrians started competing as doubles only in this season: “First we borrowed a doubleseater sled and just tried how it would feel. We were quite pleased and went to buy our own sled.” They crowned their first season with winning today´s bronze medal. “In the first run we were quite relaxed, but then, when we were third and knew we could win a medal, we were really nervous, said Simon, the younger brother. “Our goal is the World Cup, but this is a long way to go.”

In the single seaters events only the first runs were held today. With Patrick Pigneter (ITA) and Melanie Batkowski (AUT) the strongest medal contenders are in the lead. The competition will be continued tomorrow, Sunday, at 8am with the second and third runs.

Ergebnisse Doppelsitzer (11):
1. Patrick PIGNETER/Florian CLARA (ITA), 0:49,46(1), 0:49,76(1), 1:39,22
2. Thomas WEISS/Andreas LEITER (ITA), 0:51,18(2), 0:50,79(2), 1:41,97
3. Michael KALCHSCHMID/Simon KALCHSCHMID (AUT), 0:51,52(3), 0:51,94(5), 1:43,46
4. Stanislav KOVSHIK/Ivan RODIN (RUS), 1:43,59
5. Christian SCHOPF/Thomas SCHOPF (AUT), 1:44,00
6. Rupert BRÜGGLER/Anja BRÜGGLER (AUT), 1:48,83
7. Slawomir JEDRZEJKO/Mateusz KOBIELUS (POL), 1:49,05
8. Konstantin LARIONOV/Evgeniy ISACHENKO (RUS), 1:49,40

Zwischenstand Junioren Einsitzer nach einem Lauf (29):
1. Patrick PIGNETER (ITA), 0:47,35
2. Florian CLARA (ITA), 0:47,58
3. Hannes CLARA (ITA), 0:47,60
4. Dominik WAGNER (AUT), 0:47,66
5. Thomas KAMMERLANDER (AUT), 0:47,74
6. Christian SCHWARZ (ITA), 0:47,86
7. Michael SCHEIKL (AUT),
8. Robert STADLER (AUT),
9. Thomas SCHOPF (AUT),
10. Adam JEDRZEJKO (POL),

Zwischenstand Juniorinnen Einsitzer nach einem Lauf (19):
1. Melanie BATKOWSKI (AUT), 0:48,22
2. Tamara SCHWARZ (ITA), 0:48,69
3. Marisa CLARA (ITA), 0:49,00
4. Kinga GAWLAS (POL), 0:49,17
5. Nina BUCINEL (SLO), 0:49,40
6. Astrid VETTER (AUT), 0:49,45
7. Katrin MLADEK (AUT),
8. Melanie SCHWARZ (ITA),
9. Christina GÖTSCHL (AUT),
10. Ludmila ASTRAMOVICH (RUS),

ck

FIL Media Service