Birthday best for Wyatt
Marcus Wyatt celebrated his 27th birthday in style as he matched his best-ever World Cup result on Friday morning with a top 10 finish in Winterberg.
Wyatt, who won Intercontinental Cup silver and bronze on the same track last month, was ninth at halfway having clocked 56.93 seconds and he finished 10th following a 57.07 second effort in Run 2.
There were plenty of positives for the former American Footballer, not least the fact that he produced the second-best start time in Run 1, with only race winner Alexander Tretiakov going quicker off the top.
Wyatt’s performance equalled his effort from his World Cup debut in Igls almost a year ago to the day and it means he enters the Christmas break ninth in the overall World Cup standings.
Jerry Rice, who was 10th at his maiden Olympic Winter Games in February and has now recovered from a minor quad injury, finished 15th having been 13th in Latvia in the World Cup season opener last week.
Rice was 16th at halfway in 57.46 seconds but he jumped up a spot after going two hundredths quicker off the top (4.95) and more than three tenths faster overall with a down time of 57.15 seconds. Clocking the 12th best time in Run 2 left him three hundredths of a second shy of matching his showing from Sigulda.
Fellow Brit Jack Thomas missed out on Run 2 as he finished 23rd in a 26-strong field in which only the top 20 athletes made it past the halfway mark. Thomas recorded a time of 57.78 seconds from a 4.99 second start, 0.16 seconds off a second run.
Tretiakov became the third straight Russian World Cup (WC) winner so far this season as he followed Nikita Tregubov and women’s WC winner Elena Nikitina in taking gold.
Tretiakov led by nearly half a second after the first run and he stretched that margin to a huge 0.83 seconds after the second. Olympic Champion Sungbin Yun dropped from second to third as Germany’s Axel Jungk took silver after climbing from fifth at halfway.
Tregubov finished fourth to ensure he and Treitakov are tied at the top of the overall World Cup rankings at the end of the calendar year.
The World Cup circuit resumes in Altenberg on January 4th.
