Salzburg (pps) The International Luge Federation, FIL – Fédération Internationale de Luge de Course – determined its World champions in the three years prior to the 2006 Olympic Winter Games in Torino on three different continents. Sigulda in Latvia was an excellent host in 2003, Nagano in Japan staged the season’s highlight event in 2004, and in 2005 the lugers returned to the track at Utah Olympic in Park City, site of the 2002 Winter Games.

“Luge has become an almost global sport”, FIL President Josef Fendt of Germany states. The World Cup series of the International Federation (FIL) proves this fact. More than 25 nations are regularly competing in the series. A record-number of 26 nations participated in the 40th European Championships at Winterberg, Germany, also open to overseas’ nations, in January 2006. The two upcoming World Championships in Innsbruck-Igls, Aus-tria, in 2007 and Oberhof, Germany, in 2008, promise to be absolute highlights for FIL attracting large public interest as shown in the past.

Even the domination of the Alpine countries has become a thing of the past. Albert Dem-chenko became the first Russian ever to win the overall men’s single Viessmann World Cup title in the pre-Olympic winter of 2004-2005 and went on to gain his first European title in 2006. Martins Rubenis was the first Latvian to achieve World championship medals in 2003 (silver) and 2004 (bronze); and Jaroslav Slavik was the first Slovak on the podium when finishing third at the 2004 European Championships at Oberhof, Germany.

Even in the women’s single there is some change to be noticed. Natalia Yakushenko of the Ukraine won the 2005 Challenge Cup. The teams of the USA and Canada are playing an ever more important role. In December 2004, Regan Lauscher recorded the best Ca-nadian World Cup result of all times finishing runner-up at Lake Placid, USA; Ashley Hay-den of the US won her first World Cup medal at Winterberg, Germany, in 2005.

Doubles from Germany, Italy, Austria, the USA, Canada and even Slovakia belong to the extended world’s top. No fewer than six doubles from four different countries won the nine World Cup events in 2004-2005, in the current winter there were five doubles from three nations.

Exceptional athletes from the traditional luging countries, Germany, Austria and Italy, con-tinue to mark the World Cup, however. Armin Zoeggeler of Italy is the record World cham-pion with five titles in the men’s single, this year the athlete from South Tyrol ascertained his fifth overall victory in the Viessmann Luge World Cup prematurely.

German Sylke Otto has four World gold medals in the women’s event on her record. Her German team-mate and long-time rival Silke Kraushaar won the 1998 Olympic title plus three European gold medals and four overall World Cup victories. German women have remained undefeated in all 65 World Cup competitions since November 29, 1997. Both athletes, Sylke Otto and Armin Zoeggeler, also won Olympic gold in Salt Lake City in 2002.

The International Luge Federation, FIL, has been supporting the so-called small nations financially for the past few years, even providing special coaches at its own cost. Olympic solidarity enjoys high priority with FIL.

At the same time FIL took to new roads, initiated courageous reforms to make the World Cup events more attractive for spectators and media alike. The starting numbers have been reduced by a qualification prior to the competitions, the team events have been regu-larly on the Calendar, and an additional relay event is in a hot testing phase.