Double medal gets campaign underway
This weekend’s racing was a successful one for both the British Bobsleigh and British Skeleton teams as the Skeleton squad secured a brace of medals and the Bobsleigh crews bagged a hat-trick of personal bests.
Laurence Bostock and Benji Fulker both featured on the podium as they won bronze in the Europa Cup and Intercontinental Cup competitions respectively, while bobsleigh pilots Adam Baird and John Stanbridge put down some strong markers in their own EC races.
Bostock won the BBSA’S first medal of the new sliding season in Lillehammer, Norway, as he followed up his eighth position in Race 1 on Friday with a maiden podium place at the same venue 24 hours later.
The 22-year-old from Derbyshire finished behind the Chinese duo of Zheng Yin and Haifeng Zhu in a time of 1 minute 45.73 seconds.
Fulker then followed suit with a fine third across the Atlantic as he medalled in the ICC race on the world’s fastest track in Whistler.
The serving member of the Royal Air Force clocked a combined time of 1 minute 48.21 seconds in a race won by Russian World Cup regular Evgeniy Rukosuev.
Fellow skeleton slider Milly Kellyman produced a personal best when she finished eighth in both the EC season openers in Lillehammer, while Freya Tarbit placed ninth and 12th in the same races and Ronnie Wells, Pat Atkin and Dan Read all finished in the teens in Norway.
Amelia Coltman was 14th and then tenth in the ICC races in Whistler, with Jacob Salisbury 16th and 18th.
In the 2-man bobsleigh in Lillehammer, Baird shone on both days as he improved on last season’s top finish of 12th with a tenth and then seventh alongside debutant Alex Cartegena.
Stanbridge and a second debutant, Johsua Hudson, were 12th in Race 1 and 14th in Race 2, with both results beating Stanbridge’s previous best of 16th.
Baird and Stanbridge have now headed home before going back out on circuit for the Winterberg EC race in early December, while the EC Skeleton team have moved on to Winterberg for races this weekend and Fulker, Coltman and Salisbury have travelled from Canada to America for the NAC and ICC competitions in Park City which begin tomorrow and finish on Wednesday.
The World Cup calendar gets underway this week, with the skeleton racing taking place on Friday and the bobsleigh action scheduled for Saturday and Sunday in Igls, Austria.