Canadian Press
CESANA PARIOL, Italy - Christian Oberstolz and Patrick Gruber won the doubles title at the luge European Championship on Saturday for the first title of their career.
The Italians won both heats and finished with a combined time of one minute 33.779 seconds.
Brothers Andreas and Wolfgang Linger of Austria took the silver medal on the track where they won gold at the 2006 Turin Olympics, with a time of 1:33.938.
There was a tie for third between Gerhard Plankensteiner and Oswald Haselrieder of Italy and Patric Leitner and Alexander Resch of Germany, with both pairs timing 1:33.962.
In the women's singles, Natalie Geisenberger of Germany edged her teammate Silke Kraushaar-Pielach by two-tenths of a second.
Geisenberger finished with an overall time of 1:35.364 after the two heats. Kraushaar-Pielach won the first heat and placed fourth in the second heat. Veronika Halder of Austria took the bronze medal.
1 comments:
There is a difference between nationality and citizenship ;)
Oberstolz, Plankensteiner, Haselrieder, Gruber (but Zoeggler too, if we want to remain in the Luge area) are italian, as in they were born in Italy by parents who are Italian citizens. They live in Italy and are part of the Italian army.
More or less 2 millions Italians (5% of the population http://www.justlanded.com/italiano/italy/tools/just_landed_guide/language/language ), though, don't speak Italian as their mother tongue.
In this case, the luge athletes are part of the German minority speaking group.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_of_Italy
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