Led by Natalie Geisenberger, the German tobogganists kept their word – and started into the Olympic winter with a sovereign triple victory.
Just under three months before the games in Pyeongchang, Olympic champion Geisenberger showed a particularly strong early form at the World Cup in Igls and won ahead of Dajana Eitberger (Ilmenau) and world champion Tatjana Huefner (Blankenburg).
Toni Eggert/Sascha Benecken (Ilsenburg/Suhl) also set the first exclamation point for the two-seaters. The Thuringians won at the start and thus also won their first duel with the national permanent rivals: The Olympic champions Tobias Wendl/Tobias Arlt (Berchtesgaden/Königssee) took third place, still behind Ludwig Rieder/Patrick Rastner (Italy).
“Victories at the beginning always give self-confidence,”Geisenberger said:”You never know where you stand before, you never know what the other nations have done over the summer.”
However, national coach Norbert Loch had left little doubt about the strength of his women’s team before the start of the season and announced a victory – from Geisenberger, Huefner or Eitberger.
Ultimately only Alex Gough prevented a German fourfold success, Julia Taubitz (Oberwiesenthal) was fifth behind the Canadian.
However, Loch also addressed negative aspects on Saturday:”It’s the Olympic season and we saw how nervous all participants were, without exception, including our athletes. You have mastered it with cleverness, but it has to have even more stability. I don’t quite agree with that yet.”
Only Geisenberger was able to make it through the first World Cup of the season without any problems, with a 0.173-second lead over the second place in the end being an expression of their superiority. Thus, Hüfner and Eitberger had big problems in the first run in the first few corners and played with it already at the half time of the competition even better results.
Only through excellent second runs and mistakes of the direct competitors was it possible to reach the podium.
On Saturday, however, Geisenberger defeated the track above Innsbruck, where she lost her World Championship title to Huefner only ten months ago due to a serious driving mistake:”I can toboggan in Igls, as I had shown many times before, and it worked out again today,”she said.
However, the third German duo was disappointing among the two-seaters. Robin Geueke/David Gamm from Winterberg, who was third in the World Championships ten months ago, missed all chances of a victory due to a serious driving mistake in the first run and ended up in 15th place. Rank. On Sunday, Olympic gold medallist Felix Loch (Berchtesgaden) will start into the men’s race in Igls.