Two football world champions in a single series: Andreas Brehme, who shot the crucial goal that won the 1990 championship title and striker legend Karl-Heinz “Air” Riedle will compete against each other at the celebrity race of the Volkswagen Scirocco R-Cup on Sunday (11:50 a.m.) at Munich’s Olympic Stadium.
At their side: the pretty TV actresses Anne Wis ("Verbotene Liebe”) and Yvonne de Bark ("Unter uns”). By the way, for the Scirocco R-Cup the event will not mark a debut at a football stadium as in 2010, at the Race of Champions in Düsseldorf, Sebastian Vettel in the bio natural gas race car clinched victory in a team with Michael Schumacher.
"We're very proud of being able to present unique entrants at this unique event at Munich's Olympic Stadium,” says Volkswagen Motorsport Director Kris Nissen. "In their active days Andreas Brehme and Karl-Heinz Riedle ranked among the very top of the world's footballers – with the Scirocco R-Cup we want to deliver top-class sport at an international level as well.” The format: The entrants compete in teams of two against each other. During the mandatory pit stop with tire change the team-internal driver change occurs as well.
The team of Karl-Heinz Riedle/Anne Wis is the favorite for victory at the celebrity race in Munich on Sunday as Riedle has previously scored a win at the Munich Olympic Stadium: In 1997 he shot two goals that won the Champions League title for his then club, Borussia Dortmund, against Juventus Turin. Riedle gathered his first experiences in the near-275-hp bio natural gas Cup Scirocco car at last year's Charity race at Adria, Italy: "From the outside things always look easy. But when you're in the cockpit yourself you realise how strenuous the job of a racer is. And you have to first get used to hitting the brakes so hard – that's a totally different feeling than driving in normal traffic.”
The second former world class footballer, Andi Brehme, who is forming a team with Yvonne de Bark, looks back on a very eventful career as well. Like Riedle, he was one of the players in the legendary national team that took the third and so far last world championship title for Germany in 1990, in Italy. The 50-year-old native of Hamburg, who participated in a total of three world championship tournaments (1986, 1990 and 1994), at the 1990 finale against Argentina converted the crucial sudden-death playoff into a 1-0 result. Brehme called Munich "home” for a while as well: From 1986 to 1988 he was wearing the FC Bayern jersey.
The world champions' duo complements the colorful mix of prominent drivers who have so far driven a Scirocco R-Cup vehicle. As well as big names in motorsport like Formula 1 world champion Sebastian Vettel, rally legend Carlos Sainz or the Le Mans series winner Frank Biela other world-class athletes have been in the cockpit: At the race at Spielberg ski jump stars and Olympic winners Sven Hannawald and Thomas Morgenstern took the wheel of the bio natural gas Scirocco.
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