Lake Placid (pps) Italy`s Christian Oberstolz/Patrick Gruber repeated their victory oftwo years ago at Lake Placid. At the 5th Viessmann Luge World Cup at the olympic site from 1932 and 1980 they won in a total time of 1:29,545 min. followed by Germany`s Sebastian Schmidt/Andre Forker (1:29,557) and Andre Florschütz/Torsten Florschütz (1:29,617). It was the best result ever achieved by Schmidt/Forker.
Now, in the overall standing Oberstolz/Gruber are in the lead with 375 points. On the second place are now Florschütz/Wustlich und Austria`s Andreas Linger/Wolfgang Linger, both with 344 points each. The former leaders, Olympic Champions Patric Leitner/Alexander Resch (Germany), dropped back to the fourth place (343 points).
Christian Oberstolz (Italy): „Lake Placid is really good for uns. We finished third at the Goodwill Games, won two years later and now once more. It will be diffucult to keep the lead in the overall standing, becauce the tracks, which will come next, are not so good for uns. They are better for Leitner/Resch and USA`s Grimmette/Martin.“
Sebastian Schmidt (Germany): „Finally we made everything perfect in a race. On this diifficult track noboby makes no mistake. But we have had two god runs.”
Andre Florschütz (Deutschland), World Champion 2001: „We never expected such a good result on this track. In World Cup it looks quiet good for us. But this will be a long season until the final at Königssee.“