Lake Placid (pps) The newly crowned World Champion Felix Loch of Germany will not participate in the 8th Viessmann Luge World Cup in Lake Placid in the U.S. state of New York this weekend. The reason is a hand injury the Olympic and four-time World Champion suffered following a crash in the first of four training runs on Wednesday. Loch did not make any more training runs. Even though he did not suffer a broken hand a first diagnosis revealed an injury to the capsule. So as to avoid any risks the 23-year-old will not compete in the men’s singles on Saturday (February 9, 2013 / start at 09:30 hrs local time / 15.30 hrs CET).

After seven of nine events in the Viessmann Luge World Cup series Loch is currently at the top of the overall rankings, with a winning margin of 102 points to his credit. With a victory on the artificially refrigerated track at Mount Van Hoevenberg Loch would have “prematurely” become the new overall World Cup winner for the second time after 2011-2012. The final of the World Cup series will be carried out on the future Olympic track in Sochi, Russia, on February 23-24, 2013. As things are now, Loch’s participation in Sochi is not jeopardized.