Park City (pps) Second race, second victory, the 6th success in Viessmann Luge World Cup overall: Christian Oberstolz/Patrick Gruber realized a perfect start in the new season.
On the 2nd stage of the Viessmann Luge World Cup on the Olympic track for the 2002 Winter Games in Park City, the two Italians won by an advantage of 0.011 seconds in front of Germany’s Patric Leitner/Alexander Resch, the Olympic Champions of Salt Lake City 2002. Third place went to Italy’s Gerhard Plankensteiner/Oswald Haselrieder.
Leitner/Resch improved the start record of Chris Thorpe/Clay Ives (3.045 seconds), set up at the Olympic Winter Games 2002, in the first run to 3.031 and in the second run to 3.024 seconds.

Quotes:

Christian Oberstolz (5th place at the Olympics 2006):
“Unbelievable. We never thought we could win a race on a gliding track like Park City. We didn’t expect the victory after the very good time of Leitner/Resch in the second run. We will do our best and hope to be on top at the Worlds at Igls.”

Patric Leitner (Olympic Champion 2002):
“It’s a pity. In Cesana we were two hundredths of a second back, now just one. I hope this will change one day in future. The second run was really perfect; I think I can never do better."

Gerhard Plankensteiner (Bronze medallist at the 2006 Olympics):
“We destroyed our Olympic runners during the training session. We can’t use them anymore. But our practise runners are not so bad. Without the mistake in the first run, we could have finished even better.”