Skip to content
Join our Newsletter

Canada wins four sliding medals at Whistler World Cup

Jon Montgomery golden once again on world's fastest sliding track
64807_l

Canada's status as a leading nation in the sliding sports appears to be secure for the near future, with athletes earning four medals at last week's Viessman FIBT Boblsleigh and Skeleton World Cup in Whistler. The competition opened the World Cup season, as well as the next four-year cycle leading to the 2014 Winter Games.

But while Canada did well, Germany's medal count showed a depth of experience and talent that other countries will be hard-pressed to match.

The opening event on Thursday, Nov. 25 was the women's skeleton, with Mellisa Hollingsworth looking for redemption. Last February she dropped from second place to fifth after making a few critical mistakes in her last run in the Olympics.

This time out Hollingsworth shrugged off the pressure with fast starts and smooth lines down the course. However, Marion Thees of Germany - who also had a disappointing Games - was slightly faster in both runs and finished the race in first place in 1:48.98. Hollingsworth was second in 1:49.40, while Anja Huber of Germany picked up the bronze in 1:50.07.

"No tears this time," Hollingsworth told reporters after the race. "I do feel emotional, just because I'm happy and proud that I was able to overcome what happened in February and put two solid runs together.

"You never know until you see the clock but I had a pretty good feeling that I would have kept my spot (silver) this time."

Two other Canadians finished in the top eight, with Amy Gough in the sixth spot and Sarah Reid seventh.

Once the awards were presented for skeleton, the men's two-man bobsleigh got underway. Canada's top prospect was Lyndon Rush, who was racing for the first time with brakeman Neville Wright.

There was a shakeup in bobsleigh after the 2010 Games, with Lascelles Brown leaving the Canadian program and joining Monaco - his third nation including his careers with the Jamaican Bobsled Team from 1999 to 2004 and his stint with Canada from 2004 to 2010. He earned two medals with Canada, a silver in two-man with pilot Pierre Lueders in 2006 and a bronze in 2010 with Lyndon Rush in four-man.

Wright and Rush got off to a poor start with two crashes in training, but managed to put together two solid runs to earn Canada's second silver medal of the day.

"I'm pretty happy overall," Rush said. "I just crashed on my last two runs down this track in training and beat up my equipment and beat up my body, and I came out here today looking for two good runs and that's it."

Rush said both crashes were on Turn 6, where he says nobody crashes. He couldn't understand it.

"I was in a bad place. I didn't know why I crashed in the same corner twice, when nobody has crashed there before," he said. "I was like, 'what's wrong with me? I'm not a moron, why am I doing this?'

"And Neville, he didn't lose confidence, he pushed his heart out - and it's really hard to push your heart out at the top of a track where your pilot just crashed two runs."

Wright said he spoke to Rush before the race, and had full confidence in his pilot.

"He said 'I still feel confident, I still feel like I can do it,' and once he said that I had no worries at all. I just gave it my all because I knew we'd get down okay."

Germany picked up two more medals. The Germany 2 sled of Manuel Machata and Andreas Bredau was first in 1:44.06, while the Germany 1 sled of Karl Angerer and Christian Friedrich tied Rush and Wright for second with a time of 1:44.25.

Friday, Nov. 26 was the second day of racing. Canadian Olympic skeleton champion Jon Montgomery was the guy to beat going in and he turned out to be unbeatable once again. With the win Montgomery is now undefeated on the track, after winning the World Cup test event in 2009, the Olympics and this most recent World Cup.

"If I keep having success like this I might start feeling some pressure," joked Montgomery. "Really, the moment you place pressure on yourself you're gong to feel a burden to perform, and that's not what helps you realize your best performance.

"When you start to dwell on what other folks are doing and what you have to do to maintain your spot or climb the rankings you're losing focus on what's important, and that's the task at hand. And that's going corner by corner by corner, and keeping it in chronological order - you're not thinking about Corner 7 when you're in Corner 2. I can't say it enough, but you need to be so present in the sport of skeleton to be successful. I try not to get ahead of myself and keep cool."

Montgomery expected a tight race and that's what he got.

His two run time of 1:47.56 was just 0.28 seconds ahead of Kristan Bromley of Great Britain, with Alexander Tretiakov of Russia placing just over three-tenths of a second back. Bromley posted the fastest second run, while others dropped slightly.

"At 146 km/h it's tough to get a glimpse of whether there's frost on the track, but I hope it slowed down," said Montgomery. "Otherwise I have some explaining to do to find out why I was two-tenths behind Kristan. I had a pretty good run."

As to what motivates Montgomery after winning his gold medal, he told reporters that he enjoys the process.

"I think (it's) the challenge of trying to be your best day in and day out and continuing to evolve as an athlete," he said. "There's always improvements a guy could make and you're never, ever going to be perfect - especially in this sport. There are so many variables at play that precision is almost an exercise in futility, but it's a hell of a journey trying to chase it down."

Other Canadians in the race were John Fairbairn, 11 th , and Michael Douglas, 13 th .

Following the men's skeleton was the women's bobsleigh. Like the men, the women have also struggled after last season's success. Canadian Olympic gold medallist Kaillie Humphries came into the season without her partner Heather Moyse, after Moyse injured ligaments in her ankle while representing Canada at the women's rugby World Cup in September. Moyse became the highest scoring athlete in World Cup rugby history with 14 tries - seven in 2006 and seven in 2010.

Moyse is expected to return in the New Year, but for the Whistler race Humphries relied on World Cup rookie Heather Hughes to get the job done.

The team started well with the fastest first run, then ended up in third place behind the Germany 1 sled (Sandra Kiriasis and Stephanie Schneider) and the USA 1 sled (Shauna Rohbock and Valerie Fleming).

"I made a major mistake, so I'm definitely happy to still be on the poduim after that," she said. "It's disappointing, but sometimes that's the way it rolls.

"All-in-all, I thought we pushed great. For Heather Hughes this was her first World Cup, and it was our first race together so it was a learning experience all around. I've never made that mistake coming out of Corner 6 before, and I don't plan on doing it again.

"I have to keep smiling. I have to learn from my mistakes. I'm still fairly new at this, and I just have to keep going."

Olympic silver medallist Helen Upperton injured her shoulder after crashing twice in training, but is expected to be back this weekend.

The other Canadian sled, Mellissa These and Diane Kelly, was 12 th .

The final competition was the four-man bobsleigh on Saturday. Canada had three sleds in the race, with Lyndon Rush driving the Canada 1 sled. The quartet, which included pushers Chris Le Bihan and Cody Sorensen and brakeman Neville Wright, only started to compete as a team at the recent Canadian championships.

The team had a mistake on the upper part of the course and placed seventh. Despite posting the fourth-fastest second run the team only moved up to sixth at the end of the day.

"We weren't good enough," said Rush, who is the defending Olympic bronze medallist in four-man. "A boblsed race is about pushing and driving and how well you set up your equipment... it looks like we're in a different sport than the Americans. We're not even in the same ballgame."

Rush said the load up top wasn't as crisp as he would have liked, then took responsibility for making a driving mistake on Corner 6 - the same turn where he crashed twice in two-man bobsleigh training.

To be competitive, Rush says the team has to get a better push. He'd also like to see some new equipment.

"It's not like (a bobsleigh) is something you can just go out and buy," he said. "The Americans don't sell their stuff. You have to develop it, steal it, or get lucky and buy off a retiring pilot or something like that. For the Olympic Games we were able to get some runners from Monaco for our four-man sled that we probably could have used today - I'm sure we would have done better with them, but Monaco is racing four-man now.

"It's stuff like that. We are going to keep trying every week, working on things like our push and my driving, but we also need to work at getting better equipment, too."

The win went to Olympic gold medallist and reigning World Champion Steve Holcomb of the U.S., with teammates Justin Olsen, Steven Langton and brakeman Curtis Tomasevicz. They posted the fastest two starts of the day to win in 1:42.84 and followed through with clean runs.

The Germany 3 sled (Maximillian Arndt, Rene Tiefert, Martin Putze and Alexander Roediger) was second in 1:43.01, followed by the Germany 2 sled (Manuel Machata, Andreas Bredau, Michail Makarow and Christian Poser). In total, German sliders earned seven out of the 15 medals awarded over the weekend.

The other Canadian teams were Chris Gudzowsky, Bryce Diggins, Ryan Taal and Geoff Wieler, who placed 11 th . The team of Alex Torbert, Luke Demetre, Patrick Szpak and Mike McCorkell did not finish after crashing in their first run. There were no injuries and all four were willing to race again, but some damage to their sled kept them on the sidelines.

Holcomb's sled, dubbed Night Train, is the most storied sled on the tour right now, created by a NASCAR vehicle designer. While the U.S. team is big and fast, Holcomb knows he has the best sled.

"The sled is working well, it's been working well for a couple of years," he said. "I'm not sure the exact reason why, it's an engineering secret they won't tell me, but hey, I'll take it. If I don't get to know but win gold medals I'm good with that."

Only a dozen teams turned out to the Whistler World Cup, including the three Canadian teams. Many teams, hit by the economy and a drop in funding after the Games, opted to stay in Europe to take part in European Cup races in Austria and Italy.

Holcomb said he can't control who shows up, but thinks more can be done to lure athletes to North American events.

"I don't know what they have to do. Maybe if they offered a prize purse, some prize money for the top teams, that would make a difference. Maybe they just need to make World Cup races worth more points - right now a first in Europe gets the same amount of points as 12th place here," he said.

From a spectator perspective, over 5,000 tickets were sold to the World Cup races. The four-man bobsleigh competition on Saturday sold 3,000 tickets.

Paul Shore, director of the Whistler Sliding Centre, said that bodes well for the future of the World Cup in Whistler.

"(Saturday's sell out) is awesome news, it means we matched our 2009 World Cup numbers for a single day," he said. "It pretty much blows away what anybody else in the world in doing in hosting these events. No other track, even St. Moritz, will see 3,000 people, so that will be pretty impressive to the FIBT, and bodes really well for them coming back here."