GB 14th in St Moritz 4-man

Lamin Deen made his first World Cup cut in St Moritz on Sunday as he and his crew finished 14th in a 32-strong 4-man field.

Mark Lewis-Francis, Joel Fearon and Ben Simons pushed Deen to a top half spot at the home of sliding as they clocked a combined time of 2 minutes 9.73 seconds over two runs on the circuit’s only natural ice track.

Deen had previously missed out on the top 20 across 2-man and 4-man on his past five races in Switzerland but he made it comfortably into Run 2 this time around.

Having been 15th at halfway, Deen’s team lost a spot to Austria’s Benny Maier before jumping above both Steve Holcomb and Justin Olsen of America in Run 2.

GB’s second crew of Olly Biddulph, Greg Cackett, Andrew Matthews and Sam Blanchet finished 29th and therefore missed out on a second run after they clocked 1:05.70 off the same first run start time as their colleagues at 5.10 seconds.

A thrilling race saw the top three sleds separated by just one hundredth of a second at halfway, with the rest of the top 10 bunched within a tenth.

Latvia claimed gold and silver as Oskars Kibermanis won his maiden World Cup race from team-mate Oskars Melbardis. Germany’s Francesco Friedrich beat Saturday’s 2-man winner, Johannes Lochner, to bronze by 0.01 seconds over 3,400 metres of racing.

Next stop for the World Cup tour is Konigssee in Germany, with the oldest artificial track on circuit also the venue for next month’s World Championships.