Germany's Francesco Friedrich and his brakeman Thorsten Margis completed a clean slate with their biggest win of the 2018-19 season at Whistler Sliding Centre on Saturday.
After winning each BMW IBSF World Cup race en route to capturing the Crystal Globe, the pair dominated in men's two-man bobsleigh during this weekend's World Championships, winning the final three heats.
"It was great. We won all the races in two-man," he said. "It's such hard work to get this, but my teammate and me, we did it all to get this win here. It's fantastic."
Friedrich and Margis bested runners-up Justin Kripps and Cam Stones of Canada by a total of 0.59 seconds. Kripps and Stones took the early lead by setting a track record of 50.96 seconds in their first run on Friday afternoon, but the German juggernaut proved too much to overcome. Kripps and Friedrich tied for gold at last February's Winter Olympic Games in South Korea.
"It's great to get on the podium and take a silver medal. We wanted to win, obviously, but Friedrich and Margis had an absolutely amazing performance and absolutely massive starts here. They're in a league of their own," Kripps said. "We came out ahead of everybody else, so that's not too bad."
Another German sled, Nico Walther and Paul Krenz, took third (0.89 seconds back of the winners) while Canadians Chris Spring and Neville Wright tied Great Britain's Brad Hall and Nick Gleeson (1.14 seconds back of the winners and 0.25 seconds off the podium).
With a pair of World Cup wins at Whistler under his belt, Spring had hoped of repeating. However, after a year spent primarily developing younger bobsledders on the North American Cup circuit, he was mostly satisfied with his result after reteaming with Wright for the brakeman's final competition.
"We know we can win races here," Spring said. "We knew it was going to be a battle, when everyone was driving really well. I'm happy with the way we performed. We pushed a lot better than we had been pushing this season. I struggled a little bit in training, so I'm happy with the runs I put down today and yesterday.
"It wasn't the result we wanted, but we walked away knowing we did the best that we could."
Jamanka leads women's chase
The women's medals will be handed out on Sunday afternoon, and the reigning gold medallist has the advantage at the midpoint.
Germany's Mariama Jamanka and Annika Drazek put up the second-best time of Heat 1 and the best time of Heat 2 to pass Americans Elana Meyers Taylor and Lake Kwaza, who sit in second (0.13 seconds back). Fellow Germans Stephanie Schneider and Ann-Christin Stack are in third, 0.47 seconds off the pace.
The top Canadian team is Christine de Bruin and Kristen Bujnowski, in fourth, 0.81 seconds back of Jamanka and 0.34 seconds off the podium. Alyssia Rissling and Cynthia Serwaah sit eighth, 1.13 seconds back of first, while Kori Hol and Melissa Lotholz are 16th, 2.11 seconds back.
Heats 3 and 4 are slated for 11:30 a.m. and 1 p.m., respectively.
Full results are online at www.ibsf.org.
