Altenberg (RWH) The neck-and-neck race between the German doubles duos for overall victory in the Viessmann World Cup continues unabated. In the third-to-last race of the season in Altenberg (GER), Olympic and two-times World Champions Tobias Wendl and Tobias Arlt notched up their fifth victory of the season, shortening the distance to the leaders to 40 points. Their teammates Toni Eggert and Sascha Benecken, who came second in Altenberg, continue to head the field in the overall rankings, but went home empty-handed from the World Championships in Sigulda (LAT), where they only came fourth. Third place in the Altenberg race went to Latvia’s Andris and Juris Sics, who were sixth in their “home” World Championships. In the first run, Wendl–Arlt improved on the track record set just the day before by Robin Geueke and David Gamm of Germany (41.674 seconds), coming down the track in 41.567 seconds, and came first despite an excellent run by Eggert–Benecken in the second heat. Eggert–Benecken now have 925 points in the overall rankings, followed by Wendl–Arlt with 885 and Sics–Sics with 594. Sunday will see the FIL Sprint World Cup in Altenberg, the eleventh of the twelve World Cup races this season. The final race will be run next weekend, 28 February and 1 March 2015 in Sochi (RUS). Quotes Tobias Wendl (GER / 2014 Olympic Champion, 2013 and 2015 World Champion) “We’ve achieved our most important goal of the season with the World Championship title, anything else that comes is an added bonus. There’s still lots of suspense in the overall World Cup standings, but really we botched our hopes of winning with our bad start to the season.” Toni Eggert (GER / 2012 and 2013 World Championship silver medallist) “We did what we had to do, but a bit more room to breathe would have been nice. But after our mistakes in the first run we could easily have come third at the end.” Juris Sics (LAT / 2010 Olympic silver medallist and 2014 Olympic bronze medallist) “Unfortunately, this result comes a week too late. Of course it’s great to come third, but we would much rather have brought home this result at the World Championships on our home track.”