Silver and bronze medals for Silke Kraushaar and Barbara Niedernhuber
Calgary. The women’s competition of the World Luge Championships ended with a triple victory for Germany. Sylke Otto from Oberwiesenthal in Germany (1:29.393) was able to defend her title, but missed the jack pot amounting to US$ 50,000 by a very narrow margin. Otto, who is placed second in the Viessmann overall World Cup rating, in the end only missed one track record in order to hit the jack pot, financed by the International Luge Federation and its marketing partner CWL. The Olympic champion Silke Kraushaar (1:29.681/Oberhof, Germany) won the silver medal in Calgary; it was her first medal ever at World Championships. Barbara Niedernhuber from Königssee/ Germany finished third (1:29.861).
Austria’s Angelika Neuner (1:30.393) finished fifth between Sonja Wiedemann (1:30.271) from Miesbach and Gabi Bender (1:30.399) on ranks four and six.
Opinions:
Sylke Otto (Germany): „As the whole season went perfect for me, I somehow toyed with the idea of defending my title. I had always considered it impossible to hit the jack pot, as the conditions for it were very hard. I had never dreamed of coming so far at all.“
Silke Kraushaar (Germany): „This is my first medal at World Championships so that I do not really care about its color. I am simply happy“.
Barbara Niedernhuber (Germany): „It was simply cool. After my illness I kind of trembled down both runs. When I am well again, I will have a real boost someday.“
Florschütz/Wustlich World Champions for the first time
Skel/Wöller second in front of Schiegl/Schiegl
Calgary. The doubles competition of the luge World Championships ended with a double victory for Germany. Andre Florschütz/Torsten Wustlich (1:28.628) from Oberhof and Oberwiesenthal in Germany were the surprising gold medallists in front of Steffen Skel/Steffen Wöller (1:28.689) from Winterberg, also Germany. The bronze medal went to Austria’s Tobias and Markus Schiegl (1:28.896). With 1:29.152 minutes, last year’s World Champions Patric Leitner/Alexander Resch from Königssee/Berchtesgaden in Germany had to content themselves with rank five behind Italy’s Gerhard Plankensteiner/Oswald Haselrieder (1:29.051).
Opinions:
Andre Florschütz (Germany): „I need some time in order to realize that we have actually won. After the training we had never thought we could be on the very top here. I cannot really take it all right now.“
Steffen Skel (Germany): „Snow is far from being our favorite weather, so we are even more happy about our silver medal.“
Tobias Schiegl (Austria): „Snow and cold – this is the kind of weather we like. After the disappointing result in the team competition, with this bronze medal not much can go wrong for Austria any more.“
