PEWO World Cup/January 23rd – 25th 2009 in Unterammergau (GER)
Pigneter/Clara back on top, first podiums for Austria
Pigneter/Clara (ITA) Photo Credits: FIL/Sobe
Only those who were flexible enough and could adjust to constantly changing conditions had a chance to win the PEWO World Cup in Unterammergau. During the training runs a heavy storm was blowing and rain watered the track, it froze over night for the morning run and became a bit softer again for the second run. Even though they had problems with their sled, Patrick Pigneter/Florian Clara (ITA) were the team that could handle the situation best. “We have had a lot of bad luck this season,” said Pigneter, “in the first run once again one of our runners broke. Thank God we had enough replacement runners, sometimes last year we actually had only one.” Their win was the eighth of their career and put them in the lead in the overall PEWO World Cup.
Austria´s Christian and Andreas Schopf could celebrate their first podium finish in this constellation. After having lead after the first run, they finished second. “We tried a different sled for this race and it proved to be the right decision. Besides that, we like fast and spectacular tracks like this one here”, said Christian, the younger one of the brothers. Andreas, who is four years senior to Christian, can already look back at a successful career with his cousin Wolfgang. “Three years ago I started racing with my brother,” said Andreas. “We had to take a break last season as I could not find enough time, but now we are back and basically professional athletes.” Andreas is a student who can plan his time around training and Christian can fully concentrate on luge as he will join the military in March.
Christian Schatz/Gerhard Mühlbacher (AUT) started to show signs of life for the first time this season and finished third. “We never ever worked as hard as we did this December and January and yet we did not perform too well. We were close to the top people, but never better than fifth,” said Mühlbacher. “But we did not give up and looked into everything again these past days and now I think we have made a huge step forward. We are still not in top shape, that´s why I am really proud that we did well yesterday and today, as the conditions were extremely different.”
The World Cup weekend will be continued with the single races tomorrow, Sunday, starting at 11am.
Final Results Doubles (11):
1. Patrick PIGNETER/Florian CLARA (ITA), 1:12,90(2), 1:11,98(1), 2:24,88
2. Christian SCHOPF/Andreas SCHOPF (AUT), 1:12,71(1), 1:12,84(2), 2:25,55
3. Christian SCHATZ/Gerhard MÜHLBACHER (AUT), 1:13,09(3), 1:12,92(3), 2:26,01
4. Pawel PORSCHNEV/Ivan LAZAREV (RUS), 1:13,68(6), 1:12,99(4), 2:26,67
5. Aleksandr EGEROV/Petr POPOV (RUS), 1:13,59(5), 1:13,12(5), 2:26,71
6. Andrzej LASZCZAK/Damian WANICZEK (POL), 1:13,32(4), 1:13,79(6), 2:27,11
11. Kaj JOHNSON/Greg JONES (CAN), 1:23,66(11), 1:23,35(11), 2:47,01
Photo Credits: FIL/Sobe
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