Germans hold top 3 spots midway through 2-man world bobsleigh championship

Tim Reynolds · The Associated Press

· Posted: Mar 08, 2025 3:08 PM EST | Last Updated: 1 hr ago

Take the season's biggest races successful the sliding sports of bobsleigh, skeleton and luge, meaning either the Olympics oregon the satellite championships, and determination person been 59 instances of sliders from 1 spot sweeping the podium.

Austria did it twice. Poland did it once.

The different 56 times, it was German sliders. That includes immoderate instances of East German and West German sliders combining for those sweeps earlier the countries unified, but you get the idea.

Surprise! The Germans are poised to bash it again successful the two-man satellite bobsleigh championships astatine snowy, windy and blustery Lake Placid, with Francesco Friedrich, Johannes Lochner and Adam Ammour driving into the apical 3 spots aft the archetypal 2 heats of this year's rubric contention connected Saturday successful Lake Placid, N.Y.

Friedrich and Alexander Schuller pb successful connected minute 49.75 seconds. Lochner and Georg Fleischhauer are 0.14 seconds backmost successful 2nd place, portion Ammour and Benedikt Hertel are 0.33 seconds disconnected the pb successful third. The last 2 runs are Sunday.

"The 3rd run," Friedrich said, "is the decision."

He knows amended than anyone what it takes. Friedrich has won the satellite two-man rubric 8 times successful the past 9 competitions, positive has 2 Olympic two-man golden medals successful that span. He's the undisputed king of sliding, a victor of 105 World Cup, satellite title and Olympic races successful his career, and is 2 runs distant from No. 106.

"We person to beryllium bully connected each way of the satellite if we privation to beryllium satellite champions," Friedrich said. "Lake Placid, I was present for the archetypal clip successful 2012 and it's a truly pugnacious track. I've had large bushed and erstwhile you cognize however to instrumentality the bushed it's a very, precise fantabulous track."

Calgary's Taylor Austin and Ottawa's Mike Evelyn O'Higgins beryllium 12th arsenic the apical Canadian sled after the archetypal 2 runs.

WATCH l Canada's Austin, Evelyn O'Higgins successful 12th place:

Right connected the German heels: Frank Del Duca and Charlie Volker of the U.S., a half-second backmost of Friedrich and lone 0.17 seconds disconnected a medal position.

Del Duca is bidding to beryllium the archetypal U.S. men's aviator to triumph a medal astatine worlds since the precocious Steve Holcomb drove to a four-man golden astatine St. Moritz successful 2013.

"We enactment ourselves successful contention and, you know, we're evidently bare for more," Del Duca said. "But erstwhile we look astatine however we executed, I deliberation it was beauteous solid. Definitely thing to physique off. And let's spot if we tin spot distant and snag a medal."

The women's monobob contention starts aboriginal Saturday with the archetypal 2 heats of that event.

Watch unrecorded sum of the bobsleigh satellite championships connected CBCSports.ca and CBC Gem. A unrecorded streaming docket is disposable here.

WATCH l Full replay of Saturday's 2nd tally successful 2-man bobsleigh event: