Patrick Baumgartner reports the four Italian bob on the roof of Europe!

Four years after the last European triumph in the European Cup, the Italy of the four-man bob returns to rule in the continental series thanks to the South Tyrolean rider Patrick Baumgartner who thanks to today's success at Igls in the last race of the season is awarded the overall ranking of the cadet circuit.

Saturday 12 January 2019 5 minutes reading time

The twenty-four year old bearer of the Sport Group of the Flames Azzurre this today accompanied by the brakes Mattia Variola, Alex Verginer and Lorenzo Bilotti, has had no rivals by printing the best lap times in both heats and winning the second consecutive success on the track in 2012 He had crowned him Youth Olympic Champion. A track very congenial to the South Tyrolean driver who this year accompanies the opaque fifth place of the leader-classification Jonas Jannusch has allowed Baumgartner to bring the European Cup of bobs to four in Italy 4 years after the success of Simone Bertazzo , now precious blue team technician. An amazing result if you think that the Italian bobsleigh movement has started practically from scratch, when this summer Stefano Longo took the position of federal councilor with the delegation to the bob and the skeleton. Longo was the main proponent of the change by making available to the technical director Omar Sacco a coach with proven international experience such as the German Manuel Machata who coadivated by Simone Bertazzo has succeeded in giving a sort of new deal to the Italian system. The national team has thus begun a recruitment operation for new hobbyists that has touched many sports disciplines, creating the basis for forming a working group to collect results in the next two years. For this reason the victory in the general classification of the European Cup of Baumgartner has been accepted as a surprising and unexpected success that however goes to give a big injection of confidence to the whole movement after the disappointing results of the last seasons. If in four the blue bob seems to have caught the right path for the raise, there are still some inevitable difficulties in the two. In this discipline Italian technicians decided to develop the movement by focusing on three different drivers. Alongside the confirmed Baumgartner this year the ex bravers Costantino Ughi and Mattia Variola made their debut as drivers, who inevitably tried to gain experience in view of the coming years. In addition to the two new riders, the blue staff has added several new brakes, experimenting with different combinations of crews. For this the 22nd place of Baumgartner-Proserbio, the 23rd place of Variola-Verginer and the 25th place of Ughi-Fierro in Igls, should not be considered in a negative way, but will be weighed in the coming seasons. The new deal given by Longo also involved the female sector, which for some seasons had just disappeared. In Igls Italy after time immemorial has deployed two female crews brought in the race by the two pilots Tania Vicenzino and Giada Andreutti and supported by the debutants braking Micol Cattaneo (hurdler in force to the Carabinieri) and Giulia Chenet (javelin). The two Italian rose bobs got an encouraging 10th and 11th position with Vicenzino-Cattaneo, while Andreutti-Chenet reached the 14th and 13th place respectively. The men's and women's two-man bobsled Europe Cup will end in Sigulda for two weeks.