The German skeleton pilots started the Olympic year brilliantly with a triple victory. Five weeks before the Winter Games, world champion Jacqueline Lölling (Winterberg) won the home World Cup on Friday in Altenberg, Saxony, ahead of Tina Hermann (Königssee) and Anna Fernstädt (Berchtesgaden). It was Lölling’s third win of the season.
“I had my problems during training, but today everything went according to plan, which I am very happy about,” said Lölling on ARD television:”I hope that we will now do just as well in the next two World Cups and then go to South Korea with three women.
At the Winter Games in Pyeongchang (9. till 25. February) is the 22-year-old contender for the first Olympic victory for German skeleton sports. Hermann has already broken the Olympic norm, Fernstädt is missing only a top eight result.
Christopher Grotheer drove the men’s race for the first time this winter. The Oberhofer came third behind South Korea’s hopeful Yun Sungbin and the controversial Russian Alexander Tretyakov. Alexander Gassner (Winterberg) finished seventh right in front of vice world champion Axel Jungk (Oberbärenburg), who almost fell in the first run. All three Germans have already achieved the Olympic norm.
Tretyakov’s successes in the World Cup underscore the current problems in the Russian state doping scandal. The IOC has banned a total of 43 Russians from various sports for life. In the bobsleigh, skeleton and luge world cups, however, the athletes concerned are still on the road because the responsible commissions of the professional associations imposed no sanctions.
Most recently, the bobsleigh and skeleton world federation IBSF had failed with a preliminary injunction before the International Sports Court CAS, which was supposed to prevent the Russians from competing in the World Cup. The IBSF thus took action against its own anti-doping commission, which had refrained from suspending itself due to possible legal problems.
The IOC is unable to understand or accept the decisions of the IBSF Doping Panel,”said a communication. The penalties against the Russian athletes were based on forensic evidence and were legally stable:”For these reasons, the IOC has welcomed the move of the IBSF to CAS, and further legal action should now be considered”.
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