Wendl & Arlt Win Season Title with Winterberg Gold

From Winterberg, GER

(February 25, 2023) – The FIL World Cup men’s doubles title came down to the last race of the season, with Tobias Wendl and Tobias Arlt needing a seventh place or better finish to clinch their fifth World Cup title. They did six spots better, as the duo won gold in the season finale to clinch the overall championship.

Wendl and Arlt entered the second heat in Winterberg in third place, trailing teammates and World Cup overall contenders Toni Eggert and Sascha Benecken and Austrians Yannick Müller and Armin Frauscher. On their second run, Wendl and Arlt set the quick time of the heat to move into the lead, ahead of Nation’s Cup winners Juri Gatt and Riccardo Schöpf. That finish clinched the overall title for the German duo.

All that was left to decide was the final gold medals of the season. Müller and Frauscher were the penultimate team down, and their second run wasn’t perfect as they fell behind Emanuel Rieder and Simon Kainzwaldner.

The final team down in the 2022/2023 men’s doubles season was Eggert and Benecken. Their start was the quickest of the competition, but as they progressed down the Winterberg track the steadily gave up time to their teammates. As they crossed the finish line they found themselves in second behind Wendl and Arlt, both in the race and in the season points.

Gatt and Schöpf moved up from sixth in the first heat to finish third.

Rieder and Kainzwaldner finished the race in fourth, ahead of Müller and Fruascher in fifth and Thomas Steu and Lorenz Koller in sixth.

USA’s Zack Digregorio and Sean Hollander flipped as they entered Curve 14 and did not finish their second run.

With their win, Wendl and Arlt secured their first overall title since the 2015/2016 World Cup season. Eggert and Benecken finished the season in second, 59 points back, while Bots and Plume finished the season in third. Gatt and Schöpf ended the season in fourth place, while Hannes Orlamünder and Paul Gubitz helped put three German teams in the top five with a fifth place season.

Results: