Skeleton: Hermann narrowly beaten by Nikitina

Vice World Champion Tina Hermann has just missed her first victory of the season in the World Cup. The 25-year-old took second place at the second race of the Olympic Winter in Park City.

Two hundredths of a second separated them from the victorious Russian Jelena Nikitina. World champion Jacqueline Lölling (Winterberg) finished third and took the podium for the first time this winter.

Vice World Champion Axel Jungk (Oberbärenburg) surprised the men. The 26-year-old reached third place as the best German starter and thus secured the fourth podium place in his career. The victory went to the South Korean Yun Sung-bin ahead of the five-time World Champion and eight times overall World Cup winner Martins Dukurs from Latvia.

Christopher Grotheer (Oberhof) finished fourth, Alexander Gassner (Winterberg) completed the German men’s trio in seventh place.

The third German female starter Sophia Griebel (chair) finished in 13th place. Rank. Nikitina won the race on the first few meters, at the start times the Russian was clearly superior to the German athletes.

Nikitina is one of the Russian athletes under suspicion of doping, who were temporarily banned at the beginning of this year due to the findings of the second McLaren report.

Due to a lack of hard evidence, however, the IBSF had to lift the suspensions in January after only a few days.

Despite their narrowly missed victory, Lölling and Hermann were better off in the season at the second World Cup after a week earlier in Lake Placid, where they had been disappointed with places eight and ten. Almost three months before the Winter Games in Pyeongchang (9. till 25. February) the two young athletes carry the hopes of the bobsleigh and sledding federation for Germany (BSD) on the first Olympic victory in the skeleton.

In Park City, the women’s race was held one day late. On Friday heavy snowfall made a race impossible under normal conditions.