German triple success
Buckwitz wins his first world title: “I’m slowly getting going”
Lisa Buckwitz and Vanessa Mark win World Cup gold in the two-man bobsleigh. photo
© Robert Michael/dpa
In the morning, bobsleigh pilot Lisa Buckwitz joked with her pusher “with a lot of lies,” and then to crown the day, birthday child Vanessa Mark won the world title.
The title celebration with a parallel birthday party started with the new world champions already on the home stretch. Freaking out with happiness Lisa Buckwitz and pusher Vanessa Mark are already in the two-man bobsleigh before they have to achieve World Cup gold.
“I wanted to do better in the two-man bobsleigh, because it’s just nicer with two people. It’s only my second World Championships as a pilot, I’m slowly getting going, it’s just a sport with experience,” said Buckwitz, who pushed Mariama Jamanka in 2018 surprisingly won Olympic gold in Pyeongchang.
Now the 29-year-old, who competes for BRC Thuringia, prevailed on Saturday in Winterberg by five hundredths of a second ahead of Laura Nolte. The two-man Olympic champion from Beijing, who rode with Deborah Levi from Potsdam, missed her first World Cup double after her victory in the monobob. Third place went to defending champion Kim Kalicki from TuS Eintracht Wiesbaden with her Winterberger pusher Leonie Fiebig.
Mark: “The day couldn’t have gone better”
“All three German girls had the same sled. But the harmony was just right for us,” said Buckwitz, who tricked her pusher from Eintracht Frankfurt that morning. “A surprise and a lot of lies – because all the teammates were out of the house and I was surprised, then she said we have to make another recording, went over and everyone was standing there. Now she surprised me again with the world championship title “The day couldn’t have gone better,” said Vanessa Mark on her 28th birthday.
“Pink Lady” Nolte, as she is called in the team because of her pink van, hat and gloves, was equally strong with start number one and broke the nine-year-old track record of former world champion Anja Schneiderheinze (56th) in 55.93 seconds .54 seconds). This was then immediately increased by Kalicki to 55.89 seconds. However, Kalicki then made a mistake. In the third run, Buckwitz drove almost sparkling cleanly and defended her lead with the fastest time. In the fourth and final run, Kalicki and Nolte put them under pressure again with their respective track record runs, Buckwitz remained relaxed: “I only thought about myself, no matter what the others were doing.”
It was not easy. Because Nolte caught them in the monobob. This time the social media girl in the German team stayed cool. Buckwitz now has 522,000 followers on Instagram, while the bobsleigh and skeleton division of the Bobsleigh and Sled Association for Germany (BSD) has just under 5,500. The Berlin native, who is studying sports management in Potsdam, took off her clothes for Playboy two years ago, That didn’t bother bobsledder and friend Hans Peter Hannighofer either.