Tarbit triumph = back-to-back British golds
Great Britain’s stunning start to the World Cup Skeleton season continued on Sunday morning when Freya Tarbit won the team’s second gold and fourth medal in 24 hours.
Tarbit won Race 2 of the new season in South Korea a day after team mate Amelia Coltman took to spot in the campaign opener at the same venue.
Marcus Wyatt and Matt Weston also claimed silver and bronze in the men’s race on Saturday.
Sunday’s success was Tarbit’s first ever top tier medal in just her 11th World Cup race and it followed a summer of rehabilitation from a freak hamstring injury that had threatened to hamper her progress.
Tarbit triumphed by nearly a second at the track where GB celebrated a hat trick of Olympic medals in 2018 - a huge margin in a sport where places are usually decided by hundredths of a second and at a venue where she had never competed prior to this month.
The 24-year-old clocked a time of 1 minute 44.68 seconds to beat Olympic Champion Hannah Neise by 0.96 seconds, with Austria’s 45-time major medalist Janine Flock taking bronze after winning silver on Saturday.
Tarbit’s triumph marks the first time multiple British women have won World Cup gold in a single season since double Olympic Champion Lizzy Yarnold and Olympic silver medalist Shelley Rudman 12 years ago and the first time GB have won women’s gold medals in successive weeks since January 2012 when Rudman and then Yarnold triumphed in Konigssee and St Moritz respectively.
Having finished fourth yesterday when she missed a maiden medal by just two hundredths of a second, Tarbit now leads the Overall World Cup standings and will wear the leader’s yellow bib when the circuit heads to Beijing next week.
Fellow Brit Tabby Stoecker made the wider podium for the top six with a fine fifth place finish in a time of 1.45.91, with yesterday’s race winner Coltman coming 19th after dropping from seventh spot after Run 1.
The second men’s race of the weekend takes place from 11am GMT today, with Weston, Wyatt and Craig Thompson going for GB.
You can watch the action live via the IBSF website or YouTube channel and follow the results and reaction on the BBSA’s Facebook, Instagram and X accounts.
