Mapp starts season with gold & silver
Corie Mapp started the new Para Bobsleigh season in style as he won gold and silver in the opening two races of the new campaign.
Mapp took gold in the first event of the year in Lillehammer on Friday and followed it up with silver in the second at the same track on Saturday.
The 46-year-old finished 0.29 seconds clear of the field in the first race as he clocked a two-run time of 1 minute 51.42 seconds to begin the defence of his Overall World Cup crown in perfect fashion.
Mapp, who won the overall title for the second time last season, was the quickest in each heat in a 16-strong field as he came down in 55.59 and then 55.83 seconds to make it 15 World Cup wins across his stellar career.
The former Lance Corporal in the British Army came within a whisker of back-to-back golds when he missed top spot by just three hundredths of a second on Saturday.
Mapp was beaten to gold by Italy’s Falvio Menardi as the 24-year-old Italian clocked 1 minute 52 seconds exactly to claim his first ever race win. The British athlete still heads the overall standings by 18 points, though, with Menardi second and Austrian Hermann Ellmauer third so far.
This season’s Para Bobsleigh circuit features six successive races in Lillehammer, with the next four races spread across just five days.
Mapp competes again on Wednesday, Thursday, Saturday and Sunday of next week as he looks to add to the more than half century of top tier medals he already has to his name.
Two more World Cup races follow in Sigulda on January 31st and February 1st (with the former doubling as the European Championships - a competition Mapp also won last season) before the campaign concludes with the World Championships in St Moritz on February 13th and 14th.
