Home turf, to this point, has been defended.
Canada medalled in all three opening-weekend events at the BMW IBSF World Championships at the Whistler Sliding Centre from March 1 to 3, with Justin Kripps and Cam Stones earning silver in two-man bobsleigh, Christine de Bruin and Kristen Bujnowski taking bronze in the two-woman event, and the Canucks nabbing silver in the team event.
Germans top two-man to sweep season
Germany's Francesco Friedrich and his brakeman Thorsten Margis completed a clean slate with their biggest win of the 2018-19 season 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 last weekend's World Championships, winning the final three heats.
"It was great. We won all the races in two-man," Friedrich 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."
Win his fifth World Championships title, the 28-year-old Friedrich equalled the mark set by Italian pilot Eugenio Monti between 1957 and 1961.
To tie with Monti on, by far, the world's fastest track was not lost on Friedrich.
"Sometimes, it's a little too much here, but I think we could manage it," he said. "We go 15 km/h faster than on other tracks and you must make very (good) lines in the down part of the track to manage it. It's not easy."
Friedrich and Margis bested Canadian runners-up Kripps and Stones 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."
Kripps was grateful to have put down the track record run so early, as it gave he and Stones some breathing room heading into the second day of competition. Being on his home track, Kripps said, he knew exactly the line he wanted to drive and was able to execute well.
"We laid down a really clean run, set the speed record and the track record, so that was pretty awesome," he said. "That time really carried me through the competition. A lot of people were close to us or even ahead of us after that, so I was happy to have that time in the bank."
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) in fourth.
With a pair of World Cup wins at Whistler under his belt, Spring had hopes 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 re-teaming 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."
Kripps and Spring both were grateful to teammate Nick Poloniato, who crashed in his second heat and finished in last place. Despite Poloniato's disappointment, both pilots praised their teammate for his positivity and support as they continued on into the championship heat.
"He really rallied behind us and gave us a lot of confidence today," Spring said. "It was great to have him in the sled with me, it felt like, on the way down."
Jamanka obliterates track record en route to gold
In the women's bobsleigh competition, in which her four-run combined time was a full 1.06 seconds ahead of her nearest competitor, it wasn't always smooth sailing for Mariama Jamanka.
The German pilot, along with Annika Drazek on the brakes, nearly coughed up a hard-earned advantage on the fourth and final run after smashing the walls near the finish line in March 3 racing.
It was a far cry from the duo's first run of the day, in which they smashed the track record, set the previous day by Americans Elana Meyers Taylor and Lake Kwaza, by an unheard-of 0.47 seconds, but that buffer allowed them to claim their first gold in the two-woman event.
"It was amazing. I can't believe that we really made it and we are world champions," she said. "The last run was very, very bad and I was disappointed about myself.
"The third one was great. We went down the track in first place and we were just like, 'Just do your thing.'"
On her record-smashing run, Jamanka thought she would be close to Meyers Taylor's mark, but was shocked to see the gap.
"I knew that it could be fast today because of the weather and the conditions, and I thought, 'Maybe we are near to the track record Elana set yesterday,'" she said. "Sliding through the finish, I saw 52.01 and I was like, 'Wow, it was four-tenths of a second faster than yesterday.'"
In second place were fellow Germans Stephanie Schneider and Ann-Christin Strack, while Canadians Christine de Bruin and Kristen Bujnowski claimed third, 0.11 seconds behind Schneider's sled.
"Yesterday, we were really nervous with our expectations, but we were able to brush it off and we did that today," she said. "It was awesome."
With March 3 being de Bruin's 30th birthday, she was serenaded by the crowd with a rendition of "Happy Birthday" as she completed her fourth run.
"It made me feel really good. It was really nice," she said.
On the track, what changed the landscape for de Bruin and Bujnowski came early in the third run, as Meyers Taylor, who sat in second at that point, crashed and fell toward the back of the pack before opting not to race the fourth heat.
The other two Canadians sleds finished in the bottom half of the draw, with Alyssia Rissling and Cynthia Serwaah dropping from eighth after Saturday to 11th overall, while Kori Hol and Melissa Lotholz improved their times in all four runs, but finished in last place among the 14 sleds that completed all four heats.
Later in the afternoon, de Bruin took a second medal by helping the Canada 1 team to silver in the team competition. Paired with Mackenzie Stewart on the brakes, the team also featured Nick Poloniato and Keefer Joyce manning the men's sled and skeleton racers Dave Greszczyszyn and Mirela Rahneva. The Germans won gold while the Americans won bronze.
Three events, men's and women's skeleton and four-man bobsleigh, will take place next week beginning Thursday, March 7 at 9 a.m.
Full results are available online at www.ibsf.org.
