After the flawless Saturday with three victories in the women’s singles and the two doubles, the red-white-red athletes continued the sensational run and also won all five other races, thereby winning all eight competitions at the World Cup opener in Igls.
The luge men started the “golden” Sunday with a historic performance: for the second time in the history of the World Cup, Nico Gleirscher, Wolfgang Kindl, Jonas Müller and David Gleirscher even achieved a quadruple victory.
The jubilation of the Austrians in the outrun knew no bounds, a happy dance of the men showed how happy the four were together. “It was super cool. You can see that we stick together brutally, everyone is happy with everyone,” said Nico Gleirscher, who went into the second race as the leader with the knowledge that a triple victory for the ÖRV is already fixed. “They put in strong rides. I knew we had already won, that was the most important thing and I can drive off easily.”
The material, for which Georg Hackl, who was brought into the ÖRV team from Bavaria, is also responsible, is “on point, but also very close to the limit,” added Gleirscher. Former world champion Kindl still reached for victory in the second run, but of course did not regret the outcome. “You can’t say much today, we made history today. We’ve already shown in the last few weeks that we’re extremely strong.” His own first run was a bit “overpaced”. He got together with Peter Penz and “Schorsch” (Hackl).
Third-placed Jonas Müller was also “super happy. I don’t know my way around anymore. We have such a team bond. When Nico wins, everyone is happy. It’s so nice that I can be part of a quadruple victory.”
Once in the history of the World Cup, Austria had already managed to celebrate a quadruple victory in the men’s event. 1999 in St Moritz. At that time, Markus Prock, today ÖRV sports director, won ahead of Rainer Margreiter and Gerhard Gleirscher, the father of Nico and David, who were twice in the top 4 on Sunday. “Now we’re twice as involved, that’s great,” said a happy David Gleirscher. A fourth place that didn’t hurt him.
The Olympic champion spoke of the “special fourth place”. “It’s an unbelievable result. Yesterday, after the doubles race, I said that we men can only lose today if they get one to three, but now we’ve topped it again, it’s amazing.”
Already on Saturday, the ÖRV team had won the first Olympic women’s doubles World Cup competition with Selina Egle/Lara Kipp and Madeleine Egle celebrated her sixth World Cup victory in singles. In the men’s doubles there was even a triple victory with Juri Gatt/Riccardo Schöpf ahead of Thomas Steu/Lorenz Koller and Yannick Müller/Armin Frauscher.
The Austrians then also cleared the sprint competitions in the seemingly excessive number of eight competitions. Selina Egle and her doubles partner Lara Kipp, who comes directly from Igls, also won the sprint competition after the World Cup premiere on Saturday and also drive to the next World Cup station with 200 points, as does Selina’s sister Madeleine, who celebrated her 7th World Cup victory with the sprint victory .
In the men’s event, Yannick Müller/Armin Frauscher, who had secured the treble victory behind two Austrian sledges in the doubles competition the day before, secured the sprint victory. And the one-seater sprint triumph that was almost expected after the quadruple one-seater victory went to Austria again: At the end of the unbelievable weekend in Igls, Nico Gleirscher won again ahead of Wolfgang Kindl.
Neo head coach Christian Eigentler was happy about this dominance in the ORF interview. “Full emotion, sensational World Cup start – just as you dream it. The performance was terrific. You could see that we were fully involved in all disciplines,” said Eigentler, who followed long-term coach Rene Friedl together with material zampano Georg Hackl is. “We have a great atmosphere in the team, it’s really fun, everyone enjoys working hard.”
Source: Nachrichten
