Glorious gold for GB 4-man crew
Brad Hall, Arran Gulliver, Taylor Lawrence and Greg Cackett won World Cup gold for Great Britain in the 4-man bobsleigh in the United States on Sunday night.
The Brits took top spot in Lake Placid to end the calendar year in the perfect fashion after silver in Whistler in Week 1 and fourth in Park City a fortnight ago.
Hall, Gulliver, Lawrence and Cackett clocked a combined time of 1 minute 50.36 seconds to see off reigning back-to-back Olympic and World Champion Francesco Friedrich by one hundredth of a second in New York State.
They sat third at halfway having produced the second fastest start in Run 1 before the quickest getaway in Run 2 propelled them to just a second 4-man gold for the country since official IBSF records began.
Olympic bronze medalist Christophe Hafer finished third, seven hundredths back from Hall and his crew, with the silver medalist from February’s Games in Beijing, Johannes Lochner in fourth, 0.32 seconds adrift.
GB stood atop the podium on Sunday night
Hall had 13 World Cup medals to his name prior to this evening’s competition but this marked the first time he had stood at the peak of the top-tier podium as either a pilot or brakeman in his decade-long career to date.
Lawrence and Cackett had also won multiple silver and bronze medals as brakemen in both 2-man and 4-man competition, while Gulliver had won silver in his first ever World Cup race last month but they now join Lamin Deen, Toby Olubi, Ben Simons and Andrew Matthews in achieving the ultimate World Cup accolade.
The result also makes it a double gold weekend for the British Bobsleigh and Skeleton teams after Matt Weston won the men’s skeleton at the same venue on Friday afternoon.
It caps a truly remarkable start to the season for both sports, with GB teams having won no fewer than 10 World Cup medals across just three weekends of racing prior to the Christmas break.
The World Cup circuit resumes in Winterberg, Germany, on January 6th, with a double header in Altenberg preceding the World Championships in St Moritz prior to the final two races of the season in Igls and Sigulda in February.
