Hall & co make it a medal hat-trick
British Bobsleigh are celebrating two more Overall World Cup medals as Brad Hall and his crew won 4-man and combined bronze a day after claiming the same colour prize in the 2-man competition.
Overall World Cup medals are awarded once points from all races are added together and today’s third-place finish in the final 4-man event of the campaign in Lillehammer saw them make it a medal hat-trick in the final standings.
GB missed overall 4-man silver by the minutest of margins as Johannes Lochner pipped them to second spot by just two points after he won race number seven in Norway today.
Knowing they needed to finish second to secure overall silver if Lochner took top spot on Sunday, Hall, Arran Gulliver, Taylor Lawrence and Leon Greenwood missed that goal by just four hundredths of a second as back-to-back Olympic Champion Francesco Friedrich finished between them in a thrilling finale.
Hall and his team clocked 1 minute 39.39 seconds off the fifth and then fourth fastest start times of 5.01 and 4.99 seconds, with Friedrich finishing in 1.39.35 and Lochner 1.39.03.
GB, for whom Greg Cackett also featured in three races, end the 4-man campaign on 1,444 points, winning six medals, including two gold in Winterberg and St Moritz in January. They picked up silver in Igls and bronze in Moritz and Lillehammer (twice) and the only time they failed to make the podium all year was in the season opener in Altenberg in December.
“We came into today wanting that overall silver but we can’t be too disappointed with bronze - it’s more proof that we are in a great place heading into next month’s World Championships and next year’s Olympics,” said Gulliver.
Winning overall World Cup medals doesn’t come easily but we’ve proved week in, week out that we are among the best there is. We’ve shown we can beat the top two German sleds during the year and we’ve won a medal at almost every time of asking.
“Brad’s driven brilliantly all season and he did that again today. We gave him a good start and our times at the top are improving all the time - which is exactly what we want as we look to peak for the Worlds in a few weeks.”
Today’s individual and overall medals cap a memorable campaign for Hall and co after last season was disrupted by serious injury to three of the team.
GB hadn’t won an overall medal in the 4-man since 1995 before these five crew members won silver two years ago and this year has proved that the 2022/23 season was far from a flash in the pan.
With Hall, Lawrence and Cackett taking 2-man bronze yesterday, this weekend continues a remarkable run of results for the BBSA as a whole after Corie Mapp won the Overall Para Bobsleigh title and Matt Weston won gold and Marcus Wyatt silver in the men’s skeleton.
The GB2 crew of Adam Baird, Jens Hullah, Luka Williams and Olly Butterworth finished 12th in today’s race in a two-run time of 1 minute 40.70 seconds. Baird and his team sat ninth at halfway before dropping four spots in Run 2 but it was still enough for a career best 4-man result for the team.
They registered the 10th and 11th best start times in just their second competition together as a crew, with both start and downtimes an improvement on their team debut at the same track a week ago.
In the women’s bobsleigh, Adele Nicoll recorded her best result of the season with a seventh-place finish alongside 2008 and 2020 Summer Olympian Ashleigh Nelson.
Adele Nicoll and Ashleigh Nelson just missed the wider podium
Nicoll, whose ninth position in the monobob on Saturday was also her best of the year in that discipline, had never pushed competitively with Nelson after the latter only linked up with the GB squad this summer. Nelson had pushed Nicoll in Winterberg in January but a foot injury meant the pilot was sitting in the sled at the time rather than aiding the push.
They clocked a two-run time of 1 minute 44.78 seconds, going sixth quickest in Run 1 and fourth fastest in Run 2 off the ninth and then sixth best starts.
The result means GB finish 18th in the overall standings having competed in six of the season’s seven races.
Olympic Champion Laura Nolte won today’s race and the overall title, with fellow German Lisa Buckwitz finishing second on the day and third overall. Canada’s Melissa Lotholz won bronze in final race of the season, with Germany’s Kim Kalicki fourth but second overall.
The World Cup season may be complete but there is still one more competition to go this season - the World Championships in Lake Placid, USA from March 6th - 16th.
