Winter sports
Buckwitz in front of Nolte and Kalicki at halftime of the two-man bobsleigh world championship
Lisa Buckwitz and Vanessa Mark are on course for gold at the World Championships in Winterberg. photo
© Robert Michael/dpa
Unlike the monobob race, the women’s two-man bobsleigh world championship only promises excitement from a German perspective. The German trio are only very thinly separated at halftime of the World Cup.
The German two-man bobsleigh pilots are fighting for the World Cup victory in the title fights in Winterberg. Lying after two of four runs Lisa Buckwitz from BRC Thuringia and Vanessa Mark from Eintracht Frankfurt are four hundredths of a second ahead of two-man bobsleigh Olympic champion Laura Nolte from BSC Winterberg, who is driving with Deborah Levi from Potsdam.
Defending champion Kim Kalicki from TuS Eintracht Wiesbaden and her Winterberger pusher Leonie Fiebig are only a hair behind in third place at halftime of the World Cup.
“It will be very close between us, so we have to perform well again,” said Buckwitz. Nolte, who caught the leading Buckwitz in the monobob race on the second day, said: “It was solid, we’ll look for another hundredth or two until tomorrow and see what we do with the material.”
Hardly any medal chances for international competition
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.
The international competition has little chance of winning a medal before the final two World Championship races this Saturday. The fourth-placed US pilot Kaysha Love is already 0.72 seconds behind.