Altenberg (pps) The Viessmann Luge World Cup opener at Altenberg, Germany, concluded with numerous surprises: Germany’s Anke Wischnewski won her first ever World Cup event, Austria’s Markus Kleinheinz his second, and Austria’s former World champion doubles, Andreas Linger-Wolfgang Linger their third at Altenberg.

While Anke Wischnewski will be replaced by former World champion Sonja Wiedemann at Sigulda according to an internal German agreement, Austria’s national team will travel to Latvia next weekend (November 19-21) full of hope. “The track suits us well“, Wolfgang Linger said. The Austrian doubles not only achieved their World title at Sigulda in 2003, they also won last year’s World Cup event. But on the red-white-red team not just Linger-Linger proved to be in good shape at Altenberg, Markus Kleinheinz did as well, and Nina Reithmayer achieved her first ever podium place finishing third in the women’s event.
At Altenberg, Markus Kleinheinz put a damper on too high expectations, however.
“In Sigulda, we will still be in medal contention, but after that the situation will be different for our team. The success at Altenberg will not continue this winter”, the 2002-2003 overall World Cup champion said.
At the events at Lake Placid, USA (December 3-5) and Calgary, Canada (December 10-12) Sonja Manzenreiter, who finished fourth at last year’s World Championship, should be back strengthening the Austrians. She suffered a ligament injury during the preparation for this season which forced her to withdraw from Altenberg and Sigulda.

“It is quite nice when an Austrian, a Russian and an Italian are on the podium, and for once no Germans”, Italy’s Olympic champion Armin Zoeggeler commented the Altenberg results in the men’s event, in which he finished third behind Kleinheinz and Albert Demshenko. Altenberg thus remains the „white spot“ on the World Cup map of the German men’s team: Since the artificially-refrigerated track has been part of the Viessmann World Cup, there has never been a German winner. The victories in the 14 World Cup competitions held so far went to Austria’s record World Cup champion Markus Prock (7 wins), Armin Zoeggeler (5) and Markus Kleinheinz (2).