Bobsleigh, Italy is back on the podium after 17 years

The words of Patrick Baumgartner

Patrick Baumgartner changes course at the recent history of Italian bobsledding. The 28-year-old South Tyrolean member of the Fiamme Azzurre brings the crew of the Quattro azzurro – also composed of Eric Fantazzini, Robert Mircea and Lorenzo Bilotti – back to the World Cup podium, eighteen years after Simone Bertazzo took third place in Lake Placid. Baumgartner è second in the second race held at the Olympic facility in Yanqing, China, and remains behind only Germany’s Johannes Lochner, a multi-title holder in the discipline, by 31 hundredths, while ahead of the reigning Olympic champion, Francesco Friedrich, by one hundredth, and that’s enough.

But Baumgartner’s race had been going well since the first run, when the Italian had posted the third fastest time overall, behind the two German crews, but only 13 hundredths from the top. In the second, Baumgartner ès skill was to keep cool and focused so as not to make mistakes. Achieving the third fastest run time in both runs, Baumgartner è thus found himself in second place, which represents, in addition to his best career result, also the first World Cup podium in the new era of blue bobsledding.

In fact, to find again an Italian podium in the bobsleigh Four in the World Cup, we have to go back to the Lake Placid race in 2006, when Fabrizio Tosini was third; while in the Two, the most recent result è is the victory of Bertazzo himself, in 2011, on the Cesana track. Now, the work done by dt Maurizio Oioli’s staff on the crew and cars is bringing Italy back to the winning tradition that has distinguished it for decades, and Patrick Baumgartner è the new beacon.