In a snow lacking pre-Christmas season Campill/Longiarù, situated 1400 meters above sea level in the north Italian mountains, seems to be the oasis of winter. The natural track luge family found a race track in perfect shape and all the happiness about the excellent racing conditions covered the fact of some missing infrastructure in the tiny 600 soul village. The local club did an amazing job to prepare a World Cup race considering that it had been a decision of Monday this week only that they got the honours to jump in for the cancelled race in Canada.

The first training day did not hold any major surprises. In the men´s run the top positions were split between Italy and Austria, just like it had been the tradition during the past World Cup years. Patrik Pigneter was fastest and was followed by his Italian fellows Martin Psenner and last year´s Overall World Cup winner Anton Blasbichler. In the Austrian team Gerhard Pilz was the fastest once again. In the internal qualification between Gerald Kammerlander and Gerald Kallan, Kammerlander was one hundredths of a second ahead. Best non-Italian or Austrian was Borut Kralj from Slovenia, ranked 15th.

In the two women´s training runs Italy´s Barbara Abart presented herself in excellent shape. Ranked first and second she proved to be one of the contenders for the victory in tomorrow´s first World Cup race. Last year´s superstar Ekatharina Lavrentjeva (RUS) came in 5th in both runs. The young Austrian Melanie Batkowski, sister of the reigning World Champion Robert Batkowski, was fastest in the second run.