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Spring, Kripps double up in two-man

Canadian bobsledders off to hot start
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Chris Spring and Neville Wright celebrate their BMW IBSF World Cup win at Whistler Sliding Centre on Nov. 24. Photo by Dan Falloon

Chris Spring took his second career BMW IBSF World Cup win at the Whistler Sliding Centre on Friday evening.

The 33-year-old and brakeman Neville Wright came through in the final curves of their second run to edge fellow Canadians Justin Kripps and Alex Kopacz by just 0.02 seconds as Canada dominated the proceedings. Latvians Oskars Melbardis and Daumants Dreiskins took third, 0.09 seconds off the pace.

Spring built up a 0.16-second lead on the Latvians and a 0.18-second advantage on Kripps and the Swiss sled of Rico Peter and Simon Friedli after the first run, which proved to be enough of a cushion to snag the victory. His first was also here at his home track in January 2016.

"I never expect to win, I expect to perform well and then the result is what it is. I knew coming out here - It's always a tight race, especially with Justin and Nick pushing and driving very well, I knew it was going to be difficult to come away with a win, but we executed today," Spring said. "I just wanted to put down runs that I was proud of and I feel like I did that today and that's what we need to continue to do in the future."

Kripps, meanwhile, had a couple moments in each of his runs that he'll look back on and wonder what could have been, including jumping out of the rut in his entrance in the first heat, but he was happy overall with how the day played out.

Hardware has been frustratingly elusive for Kripps in Whistler, as he'd previously posted four top-five finishes here without taking anything home.

"We got our first medal in Whistler and it's awesome. We could've won the race, but we made some mistakes and still managed to get the silver medal. I'm glad a Canadian won, Spring did an awesome job today."

As the 2018 Winter Olympic Games in PyeongChang, South Korea draw near, the two pilots find themselves sitting pretty early in the season, with Kripps leading the overall World Cup standings with Spring right behind him.

The third Canadian sled of Nick Poloniato and Lascelles Brown tied for seventh.