Mistake by Steu/Kindl paves the way for Gatt/Schöpf to victory

Winterberg (FIL/06 Jan 2024) The new Austrian doubles' team with Thomas Steu and Wolfgang Kindl stands for continuity in this season's EBERSPAECHER World Cup. They finished second in all three races and were leading in the overall World Cup standings. But this series was broken in Winterberg. Unfortunately, not for the better, as was to be expected after the first run when they were seven hundredths of a second ahead of their teamates Juri Gatt and Riccardo Schöpf in 43.035 seconds. But they lost a lot of time in the second run when they took the wrong line from the start. "I don't know what it was," said back driver Kindl. Seventh place, 0.414 seconds behind the winners Gatt/Schöpf.

Due to the bad luck of their teamates, Gatt/Schöpf could not really celebrate this surprising victory, their second in the World Cup. In the first run they also had problems after the start and skied small serpentines. They were second twice and won in 1:26.145 seconds.

"First run bad, second run good" was the mixed verdict of Tobias Wendl. With a new track record of 42.940 (three hundredths of a second faster than Toni Eggert/Sascha Benecken) the six-time Olympic champions Wendl/Arlt (Germany) improved from seventh to second place, 0.066 seconds behind Gatt/Schöpf. "We sledded really bad in the first run, we really misjudged our equipment", Arlt explained, "with a different setup, which gave us more confidence, we got off lightly".

Hannes Orlamünder and Paul Gubitz were happy about their second podium place (0.092 seconds back). "It went better than expected," said Gubitz, "the start is going in the right direction again, unfortunately we made two or three mistakes on the track. We are lacking a bit of consistency and composure, then we'll get to the top". National coach Norbert Loch joined in the praise: "I'm happy about the third place for Hannes and Paul. It shows that they have arrived at the top of the world.

Behind the three doubles were Italy's Ivan Nagler-Fabian Malleier (0.248), Latvia's Martins Bots-Roberts Plume (0.338) and Emanuel Rieder-Simon Kainzwaldner (Italy/0.397).