Four years after the first medal-less bankruptcy of the German bobsleigh pilots since 1964, Nico Walther reaches for gold at the winter games in Pyeongchang.
After two of the four runs, the Oberbärenburger with its pusher Christian Poser takes the lead. Walther’s lead over the second-placed Canadian Justin Kripps is one tenth of a second. In third place comes Johannes Lochner (Stuttgart) with the pusher Christopher Weber.
Series world champion Francesco Friedrich (Oberbärenburg) with Thorsten Margis in fifth place still has every chance of winning a medal. His backlog on Lochner is only a tenth of a second.
Nico Walther caused a frightening moment after the finish curve when his bob lay down on his side and slipped along the outlet “I hope Grandma is doing well on the TV. We are doing just fine,”said Walther afterwards at TLC.
On ZDF television, he added:”We’ve now got two good runs and of course we hope that tomorrow’s race will work out so well again”.
This also included Lochner and Friedrich. Lochner had a hard time with the infamous ninth corner:”That didn’t work out again, and it didn’t even work out in practice, Lochner said,”Tomorrow I’ll have two more chances. You can still make a few hundredths of a second. Otherwise, I’m happy with the first day.”
Francesco Friedrich touched the bunch several times after excellent starting times and lost valuable time:”The passage above is quite difficult, especially if the ice is as cold as it is today,”said the seven-time world champion,”it just has to work twice tomorrow, and the world will look different again”.