Wendl/Arlt win in Winterberg for the third time in a row
Winterberg (FIL/11.02.2023) At the end of the first day at the 7th FIL EBERSPÄCHER Luge World Cup in Winterberg, the race in the men's doubles was on the program. For the third time in a row, Olympic champions Tobias Wendl and Tobias Arlt claimed victory in the World Cup in Winterberg. With twice-best heat time, they won in a total time of 1:27,141 ahead of their teammates Toni Eggert and Sascha Benecken (+0,430 sec.) and the Latvian double Martins Bots and Roberts Plume (+0,500 sec.).
World Champions Toni Eggert and Sascha Benecken looked defeated being 0.259 sec. behind their teammates after the first run. However, they still made the podium with the second best heat time, closely followed by World Championship bronze medallists Yannick Müller and Armin Frauscher, (AUT, +0.561 sec. ), the youngest German double Hannes Orlamünder and Paul Gubitz (GER, +0.959 sec.) and the Austrians Juri Gatt and Riccardo Schöpf (+0.661 sec.) on places four to six.
Today's medal haul of the German team is quite impressive. The athletes of national coach Norbert Loch won three victories, one silver and one bronze medal in the VELTINS EisArena.
The Bavarian double Wendl/Arlt with their victory landed their sixth World Cup podium in a row in doubles and have now taken the lead in the overall World Cup with 714 points. With 49 World Cup victories, they could reach the 50 mark as early as tomorrow in the sprint.
Quotes:
Tobias Arlt (GER): “It was a nice race from us. We raced consistently from the start to the finish. The second run was an improvement and a lot of fun. The track is in a really good condition, only the weather is rather wet. Sure, we are used to worse here in Winterberg, but in training it was really fierce, that was really fun.”
Sascha Benecken (GER): “I said to the Tobis, I don't know what you're doing and how you're doing it, but you're doing really well. I take my hat off to them for winning so confidently today.”
Riccardo Schöpf (AUT): “It's such a shame, the podium would have been possible for us today, the victory not. In the second run we made too many mistakes at the bottom from turn eleven, and then it's not enough here. Tomorrow in the sprint we'll give everything again!”
Roberts Plume (LAT): “We really had problems in the set-up today because the ice was much faster in practice. But we are satisfied. We made a few mistakes in the second run that cost us second place, but we're on the podium and now we're looking forward to the race in St. Moritz.”
The results of the 7th EBERSPÄCHER World Cup of the 2022/23 season are available under the following link: https://www.fil-luge.org/de/ergebnisse/eberspaecher-weltcup-25
