Hall & Gleeson recover to finish 11th
Brad Hall and Nick Gleeson finished 11th in the 2-man bobsleigh in Beijing on Tuesday afternoon after bravely battling back from a late crash in Run 3.
The British pair sat in that same spot overnight and looked to be on course to climb the leader board before a crash coming out of corner 13 third time round hampered their progress.
Both men remained the in sled when it crossed the finish line, though, and they qualified for a fourth and final run in 13th place.
They then produced their second fastest downtime of the four heats in their last run to regain the two spots they lost after the crash as Hall bettered his 12th-place finish in the same event with Joel Fearon in PyeongChang four years ago.
Hall and Gleeson clocked a combined time of 3 minutes 59.92 seconds as they recorded Britain’s best Olympic 2-man result for 20 years.
Germany continued their dominance of this year’s Olympic sliding events, taking a clean sweep of the medals.
Francesco Friedrich won gold ahead of compatriots Johannes Lochner and Christoph Hafer as the Germans built on their success in all four luge events and both skeleton competitions.
Friedrich and brakeman Thorsten Margis retained the title they shared with Canada’s Justin Kripps and Alex Kopacz in 2018 as they finished 0.49 seconds ahead of Lochner and 1.69 clear of Hafer in a time of 3 minutes 56.89 seconds.
Hall and Gleeson now turn their attentions to the 4-man event in the early hours of Saturday and Sunday morning. They will be joined by Taylor Lawrence and Greg Cackett as they look to build on the three 4-man medals they won on the World Cup circuit this season, with Run 1 beginning at 1.30am GMT on Saturday.
There is British interest before that, though, as Mica McNeill and Montell Douglas go for Team GB in the women’s bobsleigh.
McNeill, who finished a British-best eighth at the last Olympics in South Korea four years ago, and Douglas, who makes history by becoming the country’s first Summer and Winter Olympian, start their campaign at 12pm GMT on Friday.
