Sigulda (RWH) Even Olympic and World Champions can suffer a fall. Witness Natalie Geisenberger, who crashed badly during the German team’s training camp on the ice track in the Latvian town of Sigulda. The 26-year-old is unlikely to forget the “bad head” she suffered as a result of the mild concussion that followed the accident. Geisenberger has known since her mishap in autumn that “Sigulda is a difficult track.” Although the long-running winner missed the podium in her last race, the first time in three years since the Viessmann World Cup in Paramonovo on February 25, 2012, which also counted as the European Championships, she travels to the 45th World Championships on February 14, 2015 as the absolute favorite. The first run starts at 12:30 pm local time, the second at 2:15 pm. The Bavarian luger has won a total of 30 races in the Viessmann World Cup, but only one of those was in Sigulda. And that was three years ago. Yet the 2013 World Champion makes no secret of her target, which is to defend her title.Like all German Olympic competitors, Geisenberger, who celebrated her 27th birthday on February 5, had to miss last year’s final World Cup and the simultaneous 45th FIL European Championships in Sigulda to prepare for Sochi. Very reluctantly, as she stressed at the time: “I would have liked to compete.” Teammate and constant rival Tatjana Hüfner has more experience on the tortuous ice track in the Baltic. The 2010 Olympic Champion, who also collected Olympic bronze in 2006 and silver in 2014, has already won four Viessmann World Cups in Sigulda. The 31-year-old is also at the top of the everlasting World Championship medals list with four gold medals and one silver. No one can steal her unofficial title as “the most successful World Championship racer ever” in the women’s singles at the moment: if anything, she’s more likely to improve on it. Dajana Eitberger, currently second in the overall Viessmann World Cup rankings, can also look forward with confidence to her World Championship debut in the Baltic. Last year she was only seventh in the overall World Cup in Sigulda. The winner of that World Cup race was US luger Kate Hansen, who’s currently on sabbatical and missing the post-Olympic winter. It was the first victory for the USA since Cameron Myler won the World Cup in the winter of 1997-1998, also in Sigulda. Places second to sixth in last year’s race went to Alex Gough (CAN), Natalia Khoreva (RUS), Erin Hamlin (USA), Tatiana Ivanova (RUS) and Kimberly McRae (CAN). This list is further proof that the Sigulda track has its own rules. Alex Gough, who was kept from the first two races of the season in Innsbruck-Igls and Lake Placid by her studies, won the FIL Sprint World Cup in Calgary and has come no lower than fifth in any of her races. Her most recent result was second in Lillehammer. Erin Hamlin, who won the USA’s first ever Olympic singles medal (bronze) in the sport of luge at Sochi 2014, is sixth in the overall World Cup rankings in the run-up to the World Championships. Sigulda also has the reputation of being what might be termed the Russian team’s home track. In 2010, 18-year-old Tatiana Ivanova rose from the ranks to take a surprise victory in the European Championships. Shortly afterwards she came fourth in Whistler, missing an Olympic medal by a whisker. Last year, Natalia Khoreva took European Championship gold from under her nose, and instead of adding a third gold medal to her European Championship collection (2010 and 2012), Ivanova (nicknamed Chocolakova) had to make do with silver. But her success at the Viessmann World Cup in Lillehammer moves the Russian athlete, who celebrates her 24th birthday one day after the World Championships, into the circle of possible winners.