The shame of Sochi is forgotten: Frencesco Friedrich wins gold in the two-man bob – at the same time as Canadian Justin Kripps.
Francesco Friedrich jumped completely detached through the ice chute, then he grabbed a German flag and fell around the neck of his pusher Thorsten Margis.
After a splendid race to catch up, the seven-time World Champion and Canadian Justin Kripps raced to the gold medal in the Olympic bobsleigh history. The shame of Sochi has been wiped out thanks to “Frederick the Great”, there will be no bankruptcy of Pyeongchang.
Friedrich and Kripps were 0.05 seconds ahead of Latvian Oskars Melbardis after four runs. Nico Walther (Oberbärenburg/+0.20) with Christian Poser and Johannes Lochner (Stuttgart/+0.28) with Christopher Weber in fourth and fifth place passed bronze.
“We fought back, that’s our strength. That’s fantastic,”said Friedrich, adding, looking at Kripps:”It’s pure joy. Every year we fight each other, now we’re both Olympic champions. Crazy.”
Two Olympic gold medallists in the pair had previously only been in Nagano in 1998, when Pierre Lueders (Canada) and Günther Huber (Italy) were both in first place at the same time. Due to his success, Friedrich is the seventh German pilot to become the Olympic champion in small sleigh racing. Andre Lange last won gold in Vancouver in 2010, before the German bobsleigh team was left without a medal in Sochi four years later for the first time in 50 years.
It didn’t look good for Friedrich after two runs either, when he was only fifth. The 27-year-old from Oberbärenburg, however, changed the runners once again and was thus perfectly correct in the truest sense of the word. German national coach Rene Spies also cheered on the finish, the hard work of the past four years had paid off.
In the last two passages the “crime thriller”announced by Friedrich developed. Walther, whose bob crashed in the finish line at 140 km/h on Sunday, had to relinquish his mid-term lead.
The former luge athlete did not show a bad third run, but since Walther was by far the slowest starter of the contenders for victory, he dropped from first place to five.
Lochner stayed in bronze after a solid run, while Friedrich started his race to catch up on the difficult track at the Alpensia Sliding Centre and went from fifth to second place with a track record.
“I have to make up for the mistakes overnight,”said Friedrich after two moderate runs on the first day. Walther again revealed weaknesses at the start in the fourth run, Lochner allowed himself too many mistakes, but Friedrich kept his nerves and together with Kripps rewarded himself with gold in a nerve-racking decision.
The good presentation of the German pilots was no accident. The disappointing performance in Sochi was “our fuel for four years, the drive to make everything better”, said Spies, who was still in the staff of the then boss Christoph Langen in 2014.
Two big screws were turned: The athletics training was refined to improve the starting performance. And the then hopelessly inferior bobsleigh of the state-funded original equipment supplier FES was supplemented by equipment from the Austrian manufacturer Wallner. Both systems are now being used at Olympia, for Friedrich it paid off.