German triple success
Buckwitz wins two-man bobsleigh world championship ahead of Nolte and Kalicki
Lisa Buckwitz and Vanessa Mark win World Cup gold in the two-man bobsleigh. photo
© Robert Michael/dpa
Buckwitz wins her first title in the German triple success in the women’s two-man bobsleigh. Laura Nolte and Kim Kalicki ensured an exciting finale in the last run.
Lisa Buckwitz from BRC Thuringia won her first World Championship gold as a pilot.
The former pusher, who surprisingly won Olympic gold with Mariama Jamanka in Pyeongchang in 2018, beat Laura Nolte with Vanessa Mark from Eintracht Frankfurt by five hundredths of a second in Winterberg. 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.
“All three did a great race and built up pressure,” said national coach René Spies on ZDF: “Lisa and Vanessa are the deserved winners. For us overall it’s a great thing with the three of them.”
Monobob world champion Nolte was equally strong with start number one and broke the nine-year-old track record of former world champion Anja Schneiderheinze (56.54 seconds) in 55.93 seconds. This was then immediately increased by Kalicki to 55.89 seconds. However, Kalicki made a small mistake in the second run and fell back to third place. In the third run, Buckwitz drove almost squeaky clean and defended her lead with the fastest time, while Nolte made a few mistakes on the track despite having the best starting time. In the fourth and final run, Kalicki and Nolte put the pressure on with their respective track record runs, but Buckwitz remained cool: “I knew it would be close in the end, but it was enough.”