BOBSLED EVENT A GOLDEN TIE
PYEONGCHANG» Justin Kripps and Alexander Kopacz were thoroughly confused when they crossed the finish line. They knew they had just won an Olympic gold medal for Canada, and were puzzled why the rival Germans were running their way to celebrate. Eventually, it made sense. The closest Olympic sliding race in history had two sets of winners Monday. Canada and Germany will share gold from the two-man bobsled event at the PyeongChang Olympics after Kripps and Kopacz finished their four runs with the same time as the German duo of Francesco Friedrich and Thorsten Margis.
The winning time: 3 minutes, 16.86 seconds.
“I managed to see the clock that said No. 1 on it,” Kripps said as the German team sat to his right after the race. “At first I thought that we won outright, and then these guys jumped over and they were super-excited. And I was like, ‘These guys are really happy for us.’ ”
Well, technically, they were. Kripps, the final driver on the track, had the lead for much of the fourth heat. But with the margins so close, Friedrich started to think that a shared gold was somehow possible. Turns out, he was right. “We saw he was one-hundredth in front, two-hundredths in front, three-hundredths in front,” Friedrich said. “I thought we would tie or we would get silver. We tied and it was fantastic for us.”
America’s bobsled debacle.
The U.S. wasn’t exactly counting on getting a medal in two-man bobsledding at the Olympics, which isn’t a surprise given how the Americans have claimed only one in the last 66 years.
For the first time since 1994, an Olympics has come and gone with no U.S. sled finishing in the top 10 of the two-man competition. Justin Olsen and Evan Weinstock finished 14th on Monday for the top American showing, the latest chapter in what’s been a disappointing series of results for U.S. sliders so far at the PyeongChang Games.
Nick Cunningham and Hakeem Abdul-Saboor were 21st, while Olympic rookies Codie Bascue and Sam McGuffie were 25th.
Curling controversy.
A doping charge against curling bronze medalist Alexander Krushelnitsky could keep Russia from being reinstated before the end of the Winter Olympics.
IOC spokesman Mark Adams confirmed the positive test and said it could have “consequences” in evaluating the behavior of the Russian team.
Russian athletes are participating in South Korea as “Olympic Athletes from Russia.” The IOC suspended the Russian Olympic Committee last year in connection with a massive doping scheme at the 2014 Sochi Olympics but allowed 168 athletes to compete under neutral uniforms and without the national flag.