Old hands Wendl/Arlt catapult themselves to their sixth crystal globe
Yanqing (FIL/23 Feb 2025) In the end, experience prevailed: At the final of the EBERSPAECHER Luge World Cup, Tobias Wendl and Tobias Arlt mastered the 1,475 meters long ice track in Yanqing the best. They displayed all of their experience at the track on which they were crowned Olympic champions three years ago. With their fourth win of the season, they also secured their sixth crystal globe for winning the Overall World Cup. The two Tobis thus drew level with their former team-mates Toni Eggert/Sascha Benecken. Only Hansjörg Raffl and Norbert Huber (Italy) are ahead of them with eight victories.
Wendl/Arlt were particularly strong in the second run. “Our tactics worked out, and we really had a lot of fun,” said front man Wendl happily. "We had an incredibly good race. In the second run, we repeated exactly the same strength we showed at the Olympics: We were able to go one better at the start and then pull off a cool run.” Back man Arlt added: “The most important thing is our strength at the start. We worked really hard on this during the summer.” They had catapulted themselves into the track with a start record of 6.773 seconds. “There's nothing you can do when the ‘Tobi Express’ gets off to a start like that,” said Roberts Plume (Latvia) appreciatively.
The two Germans were thus able to overtake Martins Bots and Roberts Plume, who were leading after the first run. Wendl/Arlt finished with a total time of 1:58.143 minutes; Bots/Plume were 0.158 seconds behind. Third place went to the second German doubles team of Toni Eggert and Florian Müller (0.765 seconds behind). Behind the Italians Emanuel Rieder and Simon Kainzwaldner (0.926), Thomas Steu and Wolfgang Kindl came in fifth, 1.268 seconds behind. As a result, they lost second place in the Overall World Cup to Bots/Plume. Despite this, front man Steu was satisfied: "It was a difficult season with all its ups and downs." USA's Zachary Di Gregorio and Sean Hollander finished in sixth place (1.354 seconds behind).
