Tarbit takes bronze in Beijing
Great Britain’s medal winning start to the new skeleton season continued on Saturday morning as Freya Tarbit won bronze in Beijing.
Tarbit won her maiden World Cup gold in PyeongChang last Sunday - 24 hours after Amelia Coltman took gold in the opening race of the campaign - and she backed that up with another fine showing in Race 3 in China.
The 24-year-old clocked a combined time of 2 minutes 4.68 seconds to finish just four hundredths of a second behind reigning Olympic Champion Hannah Neise in second and 0.41 shy of home favourite and race winner Dan Zhao.
It marks the first time GB women have won medals in three successive World Cup races since the 2014/15 season and it means Tarbit ends the Asian leg of the series at the top of the world rankings.
Tarbit had never even raced in Beijing before today but she showed her first and fourth-place finishes from last week in South Korea weren’t a flash in the pan as she continues to put a serious hamstring injury that hampered her summer training behind her.
The former long jumper was joint first at halfway, having clocked the exact same time to a hundredth of a second as Zhao, and she comfortably held on to a medal as she finished nearly a second clear of Germany’s Jacqueline Pfeifer in fifth, with team mate Tabby Stoecker taking fourth.
Stoecker matched her result from Race 2 in Korea as she came down in 2.05.09 at a track where - like Tarbit - she had no prior experience.
Coltman was also in the mix for the wider podium after the first run but lost considerable speed after a hit in the mid stages of Run 2 and - in a tightly bunched field - dropped eight spots to go from sixth to 14th at the finish.
A trio of British men will now look to build on the team’s stunning seven medals in five races as Craig Thompson, Matt Weston and Marcus Wyatt go for GB in the men’s race at the same venue from 11am GMT. Wyatt won two silvers and Weston took back-to-back bronze medals last weekend.
The circuit then takes a break for a week as the teams head to Europe, with the next action scheduled for Altenberg, Germany on Friday, December 6th.
