Gerhard Plankensteiner

Gerhard Plankensteiner

nation

Italy

birthday

April 8, 1971

place of birth

Sterzing , Italy

size

190 cm

Weight

96 kg

job

ranger

Career

discipline

Two-seater
(front man)

society

Centro Sportivo Forestale

National squad

since 1989

status

resigned

End of career

2010

Medal table

Olympic medals	0 ×	0 ×	1 ×
World Cup medals	2 ×	0 ×	4 ×
EM medals	0 ×	1 ×	5 ×

winter Olympics
bronze	Turin 2006	Two-seater
Luge World Championships
gold	Winterberg 1989	team
bronze	Winterberg 1991	team
bronze	Altenberg 1996	team
bronze	Altenberg 1996	Two-seater
bronze	Igls 1997	team
gold	Lake Placid 2009	Two-seater

Placements in the Luge World Cup

World Cup victories	5
Overall World Cup DS	2. 1996/97
Challenge Cup DS	1. ( 2008/09 )

Podium placements	1.	2.	3.
Two-seater	5	9	17th
Team relay	0	2	2

last change: December 13, 2009

Gerhard Plankensteiner (born April 8, 1971 in Sterzing , South Tyrol ) is a former Italian luge rider .

Plankensteiner tobogganed on an international level for over 20 years, first in a single, then in a double-seater with his partner Oswald Haselrieder . During this time, the South Tyrolean won two gold medals at world championships and one Olympic bronze medal. There are also five World Cup victories that Plankensteiner and Haselrieder achieved between 1995 and 2008.

Career

Plankensteiner made his debut in international races early on and at the age of 17 won the gold medal in the first team competition at the 1989 Luge World Championships in Winterberg . There he started in a single seater next to Norbert Huber . Two years later he was used again in the team competition at the World Championships in Winterberg , this time Italy won the bronze medal. This was followed by participation in the Olympic toboggan competitions in 1992 , where he finished eleventh in the single-seater. This placed him in the upper midfield, but he was the worst of the three Italians who started.

After a lack of success as a single pilot, Plankensteiner switched to the two-seater in the mid-1990s, where Oswald Haselrieder became his partner. The two tobogganists achieved their first World Cup victory in St. Moritz in the 1994/95 World Cup . A year later they won the bronze medal at the 1996 World Championships . After this good result, they also represented Italy in the team competition and also achieved third place there. In the same year they won the silver medal at the European Championships in Sigulda . A year later, Plankensteiner and Haselrieder were also nominated for the team competition; again they won bronze. At the same time, they reached second place in the overall World Cup this winter, celebrating their second victory in the individual World Cup. In the following seasons, Gerhard Plankensteiner's doubles lost their status as the best doubles in the Italian team. Despite consistently good results between fourth and eighth place at major events from 1998 to 2005, they only started as Italy II at the Olympics in both 1998 and 2002 . From 1999 the leading position was taken by the Christian Oberstolz / Patrick Gruber duo . After all, they won the bronze medal at the European Championships in Altenberg in 2002 .

From 2004 the results of Plankensteiner / Haselrieder improved; in the 2004/05 season they took second place in the ranking of the Challenge Cup . In the 2006 Olympic Games , they went again as Italy I at the start. While Oberstolz and Gruber lost their chances of a good result in the first round, Plankensteiner and Haselrieder drove well in both rounds and took bronze, 0.433 seconds behind the victorious Austrians Andreas and Wolfgang Linger . Plankensteiner's response to an Italian reporter's question as to whether he would have sung “then Mameli's anthem”, the Italian national anthem , if he had won, caused widespread media coverage - in Italy and abroad . The South Tyrolean replied that he did not know this song, which started a media discussion about the relationship between South Tyrolean athletes and Italy. Plankensteiner excused the statement with comprehension problems, since he does not speak Italian very well, he would of course know the anthem. In 2006 Plankensteiner was awarded the "Cavaliere" Order of Merit of the Italian Republic. After the Olympic Games, Plankensteiner and Haselrieder kept their good shape and achieved third place in the 2006/07 overall World Cup with a World Cup victory , the fourth in the last race. In 2008 the duo won the bronze medal at the European Championships in Cesana. Twenty years after becoming world champion in the team, Plankensteiner repeated this triumph in a two-seater in 2009. At the World Championships in Lake Placid , he and his partner set a new course record in the first run and were also the fastest in the second run. This gave them a lead of six hundredths of a second over the second-placed German double André Florschütz / Torsten Wustlich and won. At the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver , Canada , they finished ninth. In September 2010, Plankensteiner announced his retirement from competitive sports and is now working as a forester in South Tyrol.

successes

World Cup victories

Two-seater

No.	date	place	train
1.	77208982525 ♠Jan. 29, 1995	St. Moritz!Switzerland St. Moritz	Olympia Bobrun St. Moritz – Celerina
2.	77288239825 ♠Feb. 17, 1997	Nagano!Japan Nagano	Bobsleigh track in Asakawa
3.	77510662600 ♠0Dec 8, 2002	Oberhof!Germany Oberhof	Oberhof luge track
4th	77675316850 ♠Feb. 18, 2007	Sigulda!Latvia Sigulda	Sigulda luge and bobsleigh track
5.	77741922750 ♠Nov 30, 2008	Innsbruck!Austria innsbruck	Igls artificial ice rink bobsleigh