Berchtesgaden (pps) The 27th season of the Viessmann Luge World Cup will start at Sigulda in Latvia next weekend (November 15-16) with many novelties and well-known favourites. In spite of the newly introduced system for training runs according to experience and quality, the qualifications for men, women and doubles as well as the abolition of maintenance breaks during the competition, title holders Sylke Otto, Germany, Markus Kleinheinz, Austria, and the doubles Mark Grimmette-Brian Martin, USA, once again belong to the favourites for the coveted trophy. A further novelty this winter is the team event in the World Cup which will have its première on the 2003 World Championship track.

„All these measures have been introduced with the intention to streamline the events, heighten the suspense and thus make the Viessmann Luge World Cup even more attractive for spectators and media”, said Josef Fendt, the President of the Interna-tional Luge Federation, FIL. Germany’s Georg Hackl, the most successful luger of all times, welcomed the reforms. “I think it is not bad if the programme is shortened”, Hackl said. The 37-year-old considers the limitation of training runs for the strongest World Cup competitors “a bitter drop”, however. “I know have more free time but less opportunity for testing and fiddling”, he disclosed.

„I know that these novelties mean sacrifices for some athletes. But there is no just solution for all participants”, Josef Fendt countered. A testing phase has been sched-uled until the end of 2003. “But I am convinced that we will continue on the road we have now taken. If this test does not go totally wrong, we shall carry it through”, Fendt explained in the FIL Press Release.

In spite of the limitation of entries to 30 in the men’s singles, 22 in the women’s sin-gles and 15 in the double seater’s competitions, the experts do not expect any basic sporting changes. Four-time World champion Armin Zoeggeler of Italy and veteran Georg Hackl have been among the favourites in the men’s event for years. In the women’s event the hottest contender of Olympic and World champion Sylke Otto will be her fellow-German, Silke Kraushaar, the 1998 Olympic champion. In the doubles, Austria’s reigning World champions Wolfgang Linger-Andreas Linger and the run-ners-up, Tobias Schiegl-Markus Schiegl, Germany’s World bronze medallists and Olympic champions, Patric Leitner-Alexander Resch will fight for the World Cup overall title.