Skeleton: Hermann narrowly beaten by Nikitina – Jungk surprised

Vice World Champion Tina Hermann has just missed her first victory of the season in the Skeleton World Cup. On Saturday, the 25-year-old took second place at the second race of the Olympic Winter in Park City, two hundredths of a second time separating her from the victorious Russian Jelena Nikitina. World champion Jacqueline Lölling finished third and took the podium for the first time this winter.

Vice World Champion Axel Jungk was a surprise for 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 completed the German men’s trio in seventh place.

“That’s a good team result,”said national coach Jens Müller,”unfortunately we had to give up the victory because Jelena Nikitina started so incredibly fast,” because Nikitina won the race on the first few meters, where she 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. This concerns manipulated doping tests at the 2014 games in Sochi. Due to a lack of hard evidence, the IBSF had to lift the barriers 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.