Pigneter/Clara (ITA) win race and PEWO Overall World Cup “We wanted to win today, we did not want to speculate and hold back”, said Florian Clara (ITA) after he and Patrick Pigneter had won the fourth consecutive race and also defended their overall first place from last year. “At the beginning of the season we were a bit unlucky, but we knew from the training results that we were fast and we had not made any changes in the equipment, so the season was a pretty smooth one. The most stressful were the World Championships as we wanted to win them so badly.” With their eleventh World Cup win they are now the most successful still active doubleseater team. The overall World Cup has been won four times by Helmut Ruetz/Andi Ruetz (AUT). Russia´s Pawel Porschnev/Ivan Lazarev will try to see that Pignter/Clara will not break this record in near future. Just on their home soil the Russians had to settle for second behind the Italians. “Today´s race we lost in the first run”, said Lazarev. “We were more than one second back, there is no way to make this up, not even with a great second run.” But Lazarev thinks that they had lost the overall World Cup long before the final race: “After our fourth places in Unterammergau and then in the World Championships we were mentally not as strong as before. This was the tipping point in the season.” The Russians had started the season with two wins, then the Italians won twice and prolonged their winning streak until the end. Next year the rookies Christian Schopf/Thomas Schopf (AUT), ranked third in the Overall World Cup as well as in the last three races - want to make the fight for the title one between three teams instead of only two. “We will be well prepared for next season, out goal is to run a half marathon in summer and we will start working on our sled a bit sooner than this year. Maybe we can go to a glacier to be on ice sooner than this winter. This season we were running a little bit late with everything.” Altogether the brothers can look back at a very successful first season in the World Cup. “Today´s last run was in fact the only one which we really screwed up. We had a mistake in the second turn and from then on it just continued all the way down, we never found back into the run. After all we were lucky to finish third,” said Christian. Final Results Doubles: 1. Patrick PIGNETER/Florian CLARA (ITA), 1:04,42(1), 1:05,36(1), 2:09,78 2. Pawel PORSCHNEV/Ivan LAZAREV (RUS), 1:05,97(3), 1:05,59(2), 2:11,56 3. Christian SCHOPF/Andreas SCHOPF (AUT), 1:05,59(2), 1:06,70(3), 2:12,29 4. Thomas WEISS/Andreas LEITER (ITA), 1:07,03(5), 1:07,13(5), 2:14,16 5. Andrzej LASZCZAK/Damian WANICZEK (POL), 1:06,89(4), 1:07,29(7), 2:14,18 6. Aleksandr EGEROV/Petr POPOV (RUS), 1:07,64(6), 1:07,26(6), 2:14,90 10. Kaj JOHNSON/Greg JONES (CAN), 1:11,25(10), 1:08,99(9), 2:20,24 World Cup Standings: Doubles (6/6 after deduction of the drop result): 1. Patrick PIGNETER/Florian CLARA (ITA) 485 2. Pawel PORSCHNEV/Ivan LAZAREV (RUS) 455 3. Christian SCHOPF/Andreas SCHOPF (AUT) 355 4. Andrzej LASZCZAK/Damian WANICZEK (POL) 305 5. Thomas WEISS/Andreas LEITER (ITA) 280 6. Christian SCHATZ/Gerhard MÜHLBACHER (AUT) 267 7. Aleksandr EGEROV/Aleksandr POPOV (RUS) 266 8. Thomas KAMMERLANDER/Christoph REGENSBURGER (AUT) 173 9. Vitaly ZAKHAROV/Ihor SENYUK (UKR) 174 10. Stanislav KOVSHIK/Roman MOLVISTOV (RUS) 156 11. Kaj JOHNSON/Greg JONES (CAN) 142 Chris Karl FIL Media Service