Kindberg (ck) It was the third World Champion Title within three years for the Schopf family (AUT), just this time it was the younger cousin couple Christian and Thomas who finished on top of the podium. Their older brothers Andreas and Wolfgang Schopf (cousins, too) had won the seniors World Champion titles in 2001 as well as 2003.
Christian (14) and Thomas (15) were the youngest participants in the field of the juniors (under 20 years). Yet they were not to beat. "It is a very difficult course", said the new World Champions, "but today we had two really excellent runs and especially in the key passages we did not make one single mistake."
Alex Innerbichler/Harald Laimer (ITA), who both had already won junior World Championship medals each with his usual partner (Alex Innerbichler with his brother Günther and Harald Laimer with Michael Graf), had to settle for silver. They did the first race ever in this constellation. "Considering this, we have to be satisfied with the result. We only had five training runs together."
Disappointment felt bronze medallists Lukas Wagner and Siegfried Truppe only in the first moment. "We had no big mistake or anything, just little ones that summed up towards the end."

Today, Saturday, the single seater races were started with the first run for men as well as for women. Barbara Abart (ITA) leads by more than one second ahead of her team mate and title defender Sandra Lanthaler. One second might be easily enough for a security run in the World Cup with two runs only, but Championships are held in three runs, so the race is still open.
In the men´s race Andreas Gruber ahead of three more Italians took the lead.

Results of the first day:

Double seaters:

1. Christian Schopf/Thomas Schopf (AUT), 1:18,04 (1), 1:17,93 (1), 2:35,97
2. Harald Laimer/Alexander Innerbichler (ITA), 1:18,12 (2), 1.18,01 (2), 2.36,13
3. Lukas Wagner/Siegfried Truppe (AUT), 1:18,54 (3), 1:19,11 (4), 2:37,65
4. Aleksandrej Egerov/Petr Popov (RUS), 1:19,50 (4), 1:18,52 (3), 2:38,02
5. Andrzej Tyrna/Tomasz Kowalczyk (POL), 1:20,71 (7), 1:19,21, 2.39,92
6. Mario Gortnar/Jure Potocnik (SLO), 1:20,13 (6), 1:21,06 (7), 2:41,19
7. Vladimir Alehin/Maksim Batunin (RUS), 1:21,98 (8), 1:19,25 (6), 2:41,23
8. Galabin Botzev/Zlatomir Zdravkov (BUL), 1:34,75 (9), 1:38,28 (8), 3:13,03
9. Ulrich Trenkwalder/Ingrid Gurschler (ITA), 1:19,57 (5), 1:54,47 (9), 3:14,04