Zoeggeler, Huefner and Linger-Linger winners at the 2011 season’s final
Sigulda (pps) Since the 2003-2004 season Sigulda, Latvia, has been a fixture on the World Cup schedule. This year, Sigulda is the penultimate stop on the Viessmann Luge World Cup series. While Germany has already won the overall World Cup in the Team Relay Event, the overall winners in the men’s and women’s singles might well be decided this weekend in Sigulda. As there is still a “neck-and-neck” race in the doubles, with just 15 points separating the two top teams in the overall rankings, the overall doubles winners will probably be decided at the World Cup final in Paramonovo, one week later.
In the 2010-2011 season, Sigulda saw a rather exceptional “outcome” in the men’s singles: While the German lugers were essentially also-rans - a seventh place (Jan-Armin Eichhorn), 10th place (Andi Langenhan), 11th place (David Moeller), 13th place (Johannes Ludwig) and an 14th place (Felix Loch) – the athletes from the East were rather very successful. Behind Italian Armin Zoeggeler on the podium’s top spot, who celebrated his ninth victory in Sigulda and, at the same time, the overall Luge World Cup, followed two Russian lugers with Albert Demchenko (second place) and Viktor Kneyb (fourth place). Martins Rubenis, of Latvia earned bronze on his “home-track”.
At the 2011 season’s final Tatjana Huefner celebrated her fourth victory on the track in Sigulda. At the same time she earned her fourth consecutive overall World Cup win as she won seven of the nine World Cup races. Second place went to Russia’s Tatiana Ivanova. Huefner’s teammate Anke Wischnewski was third. Canadian Alex Gough, having ended the winning series of Germany’s women lugers thanks to her victory in Paramonovo, again demonstrated a good performance, earning a fourth place result.
Even though the Austrian team of brothers Andreas and Wolfgang Linger posted their third consecutive victory in Sigulda in 2011, they failed to take the overall World Cup crown from their German opponents Tobias Wendl-Tobias Arlt who earned a seventh place. The Italian doubles of Christian Oberstolz-Patrick Gruber earned second place ahead of Germany’s Toni Eggert-Sascha Benecken.
