Koenigssee (pps) Jubilee at Koenigssee: The oldest artificially refrigerated track will host a Viessmann Luge World Cup for the 25 th time on the coming weekend (January 5-7). The tube at the foot of Watzmann Mountain is now the record venue. No other track has hosted more Viessmann Luge World Cup events. However, the weekend after Koenigssee the Austrian track at Innsbruck-Igls (January 13-15) will equal that record. Germany’s Silke Kraushaar, Russia’s Albert Demchenko and Italy’s doubles Christian Oberstolz-Patrick Gruber are the current leaders in the Viessmann Luge World Cup.

Silke Kraushaar, the 1998 Olympic champion, has a comfortable lead of 100 points with 455 points towards her German team-mates Sylke Otto (355) and Tatjana Huefner (309). In addition to this trio, fellow-German Barbara Niedernhuber, the 1998 and 2002 Olympic silver medallist as well as the 2005 Viessmann Luge World Cup title holder, will try to use her last chance for a ticket to the 2006 Olympic Winter Games. The following week at Igls, World bronze medallist Anke Wischnewski will have a new chance in the German team. According to the Bobsleigh and Luge Federation for Germany, BSD, two of the three Olympic tickets have already been given to Silke Kraushaar and Sylke Otto.

The 2002 Olympic doubles champions Patric Leitner and Alexander Resch have also booked their tickets for Torino. The Germans are currently in second position with 366 points behind Italy’s Oberstolz-Gruber (385). On their home-track, the three-time World champions are striving for their third victory this season, their third successive win at Koenigssee and their altogether 23 rd World Cup victory. “That’s our home-track, it suits us and we usually do well here”, Patric Leitner says.

The “Kitzbuehel of the lugers“, as Germany’s three-time Olympic champion Georg Hackl usually calls his home-track at Koenigssee, an allusion to the Mecca of the Alpine skiers in Austria. The most successful luger of all times gained five of his altogether 33 Viessmann Luge World Cup victories on his home-track. After his sporadic participation in the World Cup competitions before Christmas finishing seventh (Torino) and second (Calgary), Hackl now wants to compete in all events in the new year.

In the previous Viessmann Luge World Cup events in Sigulda/Latvia, Cesana-Torino/Italy, Altenberg/Germany, Calgary/Canada and Lake Placid/USA, Russian title holder Albert Demchenko and Italian 2002 Olympic champion Armin Zoeggeler proved to compete in a class of their own with two wins each. Demchenko is on the road to successfully defend his title, heading the overall rankings with 410 points, followed by Zoeggeler (344), US American Tony Benshoof (325) and German World bronze medallist David Moeller (296).