Bobsleigh World Championships in St. Moritz
After a moment of shock: double success by Kalicki and Buckwitz
Kim Kalicki and Leonie Fiebig cheer at the finish line. photo
© Mayk Wendt/KEYSTONE/dpa
After the fall of Olympic champion Laura Nolte, Kim Kalicki and Lisa Buckwitz keep their nerves on the steering cables and win gold and silver at the two-man bobsleigh World Championships.
At the Olympics in Beijing, Kim Kalicki and Lisa Buckwitz consoled each other after just missing out on a medal in fourth place, and now they are celebrating gold and silver at the World Championships.
Kalicki from Wiesbaden raced to the world title in two-man bobsled with brakewoman Leonie Fiebig after winning two World Championships silvers. Only five hundredths of a second behind, Buckwitz – this time as a pilot – took second place in St. Moritz with Kira Lipperheide ahead of Kaillie Humphries from the USA.
“The last few weeks have been tough,” Kalicki said of a couple of falls before. Fiebig spoke of “sleepless nights and a few ailments” – all forgotten now. “If I can speak openly and honestly: I almost puked from the inside out. But I said to myself, Kim, you can do it, just drive normal bobsleigh, that’s enough,” said 25-year-old Kalicki. Head coach René Spies emphasized that “the most experienced on the steering cables won” with her – and the double success in front of the three-time Olympic champion Humphries was “outstanding”.
The former brakewoman Buckwitz, who switched to steering ropes with Mariama Jamanka after the Olympic gold coup in Pyeongchang, has finally arrived at the top of the world pilots list after bronze in monobob. “Second place, it doesn’t get much better than that,” she said after her first world championship as boss in the bobsleigh. “It was a long process, it’s also an experience sport. It was difficult years, but it was worth it,” said Buckwitz, adding: “I would do it that way again.”
For two-man bobsleigh Olympic champion Laura Nolte, the fight for the title ended prematurely after the third run. The woman from Winterberg fell with her brakewoman, Neele Schuten, as she did in the final training session. She skidded out of the “Horse-Shoe” curve too early, then got too much pressure and fell again in the same place. “Yesterday there was a safety line, now we wanted to attack. I wanted to do a bit more, then the steering reacted more than I thought. Then it just fell over,” said Nolte, who became world champion in monobob for the first time last week .