Natural Track Luge World Championship 1998

The 11th FIL - natural track luge World Cup took place from January 31 to February 2, 1998 in Rautavaara in Finland instead.

Single seater men

space	Surname	time
01	Reinhard Gruber	?
02	Martin Gruber	?
	Anton Blasbichler	?
04th	Gerhard Pilz	?
05	Martin Psenner	?
06th	Manfred Graves	?
07th	Robert Tomelitsch	?
08th	Georg Eberharter	?
09	Knut Solheim	?
10	Gerald Kallan	?
11	Roland Ploner	?
12	Tomi Ahonen	?
13	Helmut Ruetz	?
14th	Grega Spendov	?
15th	Ferdinand Hirzegger	?
16	Gerhard Mühlbacher	?
17th	Michael Kolesow	?
18th	Mika Ahonen	?
19th	Vyacheslav Bywalsev	?
20th	Roman Molwistov	?
21st	Norbert Parusel	?
22nd	Pyotr Milevich	?
23	Marcus Cruel	?
24	Kristian Roel	?
25th	Jesse Renfors	?
26th	Jarmo Korhonen	?
27	Sergei Petrov	?
	Hannu Heikkilä	?
29	Peter Stiepan	?
30th	Kimmo Pilli	?
31	Luis Reichl	?
32	Toni Hannula	?
33	Carl Keith Smith	?
34	Eddy Dunlop	?
35	Boris Yvai	?
-	Wilfried Charvat	DNS

The reigning European champion Reinhard Gruber from Italy won the world championship in the men's singles. Ex-aequo in second place came Martin Gruber and Anton Blasbichler , both also from Italy. This is the second time that all medals in the men's singles have gone to Italy at a world championship. The defending champion Gerhard Pilz from Austria, who had won the last five world championships, came in fourth.

Single-seater women

space	Surname	time
01	Lyubov Panjutina	?
02	Christa Gietl	?
03	Sonja Steinacher	?
04th	Sandra Mariner	?
05	Elvira Holzknecht	?
06th	Sonja Dobson	?
07th	Nicole Greener	?
08th	Polina Danilevskaya	?
09	Tiina El-Nemr	?
10	Ekaterina Lavrentieva	?
11	Erna Schweigl	?
12	Simona Martin	?
13	Anna Kotowa	?
14th	Manuela Zanona	?
15th	Lorraine Thirsk	?
16	Jenny Hultmann	?
17th	Susanne Zesiger	?

The Russian Lyubow Panjutina won the women's singles world for the second time since 1992. In second place was the Italian Christa Gietl , who won her first medal in championships and her only one in world championships. Third place went to her compatriot Sonja Steinacher , who had also finished third at the European Championships last year.

Two-seater

space	Surname	time
01	Andi Ruetz - Helmut Ruetz	?
02	Manfred Gräber - Hubert Burger	?
03	Reinhard Beer - Herbert Kögl	?
04th	Harald Kleinhofer - Gerhard Mühlbacher	?
05	Martin Psenner - Christian Hafner	?
06th	Armin Mair - David Mair	?
07th	Martin Schneebauer - Peter Lechner	?
08th	Pyotr Milevich - Vyacheslav Byvaltsev	?
09	Sergei Petrov - Roman Molvistov	?
10	Yevgeny Yakushin - Sergei Kwasnikow	?
11	Timo Heikkilä - Mikko Uotila	?

The Austrians Andi and Helmut Ruetz , who had been European champions twice before, won their first and only world championship title in the doubles. At the last World Cup they had already reached second place. The Italians Manfred Gräber and Hubert Burger won the silver medal . Gräber was world champion with Günther Steinhauser back in 1994, Burger won bronze with Roland Niedermair in the same year . Third place went to the defending champions Reinhard Beer and Herbert Kögl from Austria.

Medal table

space	country	gold	silver	bronze	total
1.	Italy	1	3	2	6th
2.	Austria	1	-	1	2
3.	Russia	1	-	-	1

literature

• Harald Steyrer, Herbert Wurzer, Egon Theiner: 50 years of FIL 1957–2007. The history of the International Luge Federation in three volumes . tape II . Egoth Verlag, Vienna 2007, ISBN 978-3-902480-46-0 , p. 296 .