Lake Placid (RWH): All current World Champions and last season’s overall World Cup winners will be on the starting line when the BMW IBSF Bobsleigh and Skeleton World Cup kicks off for the Olympic season. Francesco Friedrich (GER), World Champion and overall World Cup winner in the 2-man bobsleigh will be at the opener in Lake Placid (USA), along with his teammate Johannes Lochner, who shared first place with Friedrich in the 4-man bobsleigh at BMW IBSF World Championships in 2017. The World Champions and defending World Cup winners in skeleton, Jacqueline Lölling of Germany and Martins Dukurs of Latvia, will also be in Lake Placid, along with the overall winner in the 4-man bobsleigh Alexander Kasjanov. At their home
event, the US team will be led by two bobsleigh pilots: World Champion Elana Meyers Taylor and overall World Cup winner Jamie Greubel Poser. Athletes from a total of 22 countries will be battling it out in the opening World Cup races in Lake Placid.
China set to compete for the first time
The season opener in Lake Placid (USA) will see the People’s Republic of China taking part in the BMW IBSF World Cup for the first time in history. Skeleton athlete Wenqiang Geng, who finished fourth overall in last winter’s IBSF Intercontinental Cup, has been nominated for his first World Cup race of the Olympic season by head coach Jeff Pain.
To be eligible to start, the 22-year-old–like all other athletes–must first complete at least two crash-free runs during the official World Cup training session.
Lake Placid is the course where Wenqiang Geng achieved his best results to date: In March 2016, he finished sixth at the IBSF North American Cup and in January 2017 he took fifth place in the Intercontinental Cup.
First Junior European Champions
The International Bobsleigh & Skeleton Federation (IBSF) will crown its first ever Junior European Champions in the 2017/2018 season. The Olympic winter sport association’s executive body decided to introduce the event.
The title of Junior European Champion in the disciplines women’s skeleton, men’s skeleton, women’s bobsleigh, 2-man bobsleigh and 4-man bobsleigh will be awarded to the athlete with the most points in total in the IBSF Europe Cup. In the bobsleigh events, separate rankings will be created for the categories U23 and U26. According to the IBSF’s statutes, an athlete may compete as a junior until the age of 23 in skeleton and until 26 in bobsleigh.
The IBSF’s bobsleigh and skeleton athletes will compete in their first Europe Cup event in Lillehammer (NOR) on 11 and 12 November. The overall titles and the trophies for the athletes in first to third place will be presented after the series final. The bobsleigh athletes will compete in the last of their eight season races in Winterberg (GER) from 12 to 14 January 2018, while the skeleton final in the Europe Cup is scheduled for Innsbruck (AUT) on 19 January 2018.
Steven Langton back
Steven Langton will celebrate his comeback in the BMW IBSF World Cup in Lake Placid. This will mark the first time the bobsleigh brakeman has made it onto the US team since the Winter Olympic Games in Sochi in 2014. Steven Langton won World Championship gold in the 2-man and 4-man bobsleigh in 2012 and Olympic bronze in 2014– both times with pilot Steven Holcomb, who passed away unexpectedly in May 2017. Together, the two athletes finished on the podium at countless World Cup races in both the 2-man and 4-man bobsleigh. Steven Langton is signed up to compete in his home World Cup race in Lake Placid, where he will be racing with the pilot Justin Olsen.
No Annika Drazek at the opening event
Annika Drazek (GER) will not be competing in the first three stops in the 2017/2018 BMW IBSF World Cup. According to a report by the Oberbayerische Volksblatt newspaper from Rosenheim, Germany, the German team’s head coach René Spies has decided to rest his best bobsleigh brakewoman at the start of the season. “We need her to be in top form for PyeongChang,” says René Spies on ovb-online-de.
The fourth World Cup stop in Winterberg (8–10 December) will mark the comeback of Annika Drazek, who was the 2016 World Champion with Anja Schneiderheinze and last winter’s European Champion with Mariama Jamanka. Racing with the latter, she also finished fourth at the World Cup race in PyeongChang, a trial for the Olympics. The pilot she will race with has
yet to be announced.
US team’s race suits with Steven Holcomb’s initials
The US team’s racing suits will bear Steven Holcomb’s initials for the Olympic season. The bobsleigh pilot, who was the 2010 Olympic Champion in the 2-man and 4-man bobsleigh and the World Champion in 2009 (2-man) and 2012 (2-man and 4-man), was found dead unexpectedly at the age of 37 on 6 May. US athletes will now honour their former team-mate with the initials “SH” as a special logo. Steven Holcomb was a member of the US national team for 20 years.
“It’s been a challenge for the team to move forward without the security of knowing we could count on Steven Holcomb to pull us through,” said Darrin Steele, CEO of USA Bobsled & Skeleton in a press release. “I’m proud of the character they’ve shown and I look forward to seeing what they can do on the world stage.”
(Source: IBSF)