Matt Weston, Susanne Kreher win first world skeleton titles; Olympic champs struggle

By OlympicTalkJan 28, 2023, 12:49 PM EST

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Great Britain’s Matt Weston and German Susanne Kreher consolidated breakout post-Olympic seasons by winning world skeleton titles in St. Moritz, Switzerland, on Friday.

Weston, 15th at last year’s Olympics, prevailed by 1.79 seconds combining times from four runs, the largest margin of victory at worlds for men or women since 2012.

Weston became the second British man to win a world skeleton title after Kristan Bromley in 2008. The 25-year-old from Surrey left taekwondo at age 17 due to a reported back injury and has three wins in six World Cups this season after considering quitting the sport over the summer, according to the BBC.

“What happened there [at Beijing 2022] hit us all really hard, and it took a while to get over,” he said, speaking of the whole British skeleton team that had no top-10 finishes after medals in the last five Olympics, according to the BBC.

Italian Amedeo Bagnis, whose best World Cup finish is eighth, took silver, a year after placing 11th at the Olympics. South Korean Jeong Seung-Gi earned bronze by one hundredth over Brit Chris Thompson, a year after placing 10th at the Olympics.

Kreher, a 24-year-old sprint convert in her first full World Cup season, won by one hundredth of a second over Olympic bronze medalist Kimberley Bos of the Netherlands. Mimi Rahneva took bronze for Canada’s first Olympic or world skeleton medal since 2015.

Kreher extended Germany’s streak to six consecutive women’s world titles. Kreher, last year’s world junior champion, has three World Cup podiums this season, but no wins on the circuit.

Germany’s reigning Olympic champions Christopher Grotheer and Hannah Neise were 10th and 15th, respectively. Tina Hermann, who won the last three women’s world titles, was fifth.

Two other Olympic champions were absent: 2014 gold medalist Aleksandr Tretiyakov is out due to the ban on Russians for the war in Ukraine. Yun Sung-Bin, a 2018 gold medalist, is taking this season off but is expected to come back, according to the South Korean federation.

The top Americans were Hallie Clarke in 10th for the women and Austin Florian in 19th for the men. The last U.S. medalist at worlds was Noelle Pikus-Pace, who took silver in 2013.

Katie Uhlaender, the top U.S. finisher at the last worlds and last Olympics (sixth both times), has not competed this season after rupturing a tendon in her right ankle two months ago.

Worlds continue with the women’s monobob and two-man bobsled events Saturday and Sunday.

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Martins Dukurs, skeleton legend, retires at age 38

By OlympicTalkAug 15, 2022, 3:08 PM EDT

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Latvian Martins Dukurs, arguably the greatest skeleton slider in history, retired at age 38.

“I made a decision, full of emotions but logical,” Dukurs, nicknamed “Superman,” posted on social media on Saturday, according to an International Bobsled and Skeleton Federation (IBSF) translation. “I have experienced defeats, great victories, indescribable excitement and will definitely miss competing. But sometimes you have to quit to take on new challenges in life.”

Dukurs holds the skeleton record for world championships (six), World Cup season titles (11) and World Cup race victories (61). He earned Olympic silver medals in 2010 and 2014, both times finishing behind a slider from the host nation who benefited from substantially more training experience on the track.

The IBSF reported that Dukurs retired in 2018, but he forged ahead after placing fourth in the PyeongChang Winter Games for one last shot at Olympic gold in Beijing. He ended up seventh at his fifth and last Olympics.

Dukurs is on the short list of greatest Olympians not to win a gold medal with the likes of Michelle Kwan (figure skating), Jeremy Wotherspoon (speed skating) and Marc Girardelli (Alpine skiing) in winter sports.

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Katie Uhlaender makes fifth, likely final Olympics in skeleton

By OlympicTalkJan 15, 2022, 6:21 AM EST

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Katie Uhlaender is going to a fifth and likely final Olympics in skeleton, clinching a spot as the highest-ranked American woman this season.

She’s joined by first-time Olympians Kelly Curtis and Andrew Blaser on the smallest U.S. Olympic skeleton team since the sport returned to the Olympic program in 2002.

Uhlaender, a 37-year-old with a best Olympic finish of fourth, will tie the record for Winter Olympic appearances by a U.S. woman. She will likely be the oldest female Olympian on the entire U.S. team in Beijing, if neither Lolo Jones nor Lauren Gibbs makes it in bobsled.

She will be the oldest U.S. Olympic female skeleton slider ever, breaking the record held by Lea Ann Parsley, a silver medalist in 2002 in women’s skeleton’s debut.

Snowboarder Lindsey Jacobellis and curler John Shuster previously qualified for their fifth Olympics. Shaun White is also likely to be named to his fifth Olympic team.

MORE: U.S. athletes qualified for 2022 Winter Olympics

Uhlaender, the 2012 World champion and two-time World Cup season champ, didn’t compete in the season after placing 13th at the 2018 Olympics. She returned in 2019-20 and did lower-level races before her first World Cup in nearly three years in January 2021.

Her best finish in 11 World Cup races over the last 13 months: a pair of fifths.

The Olympic medal favorites include World Cup season champion Kimberley Bos of the Netherlands, Austrian Janine Flock, German Tina Hermann and Russian Yelena Nikitina. In a twist Friday, 31-year-old Australian Jackie Narracott beat all of them in the last World Cup before the Olympics. Narracott’s best prior World Cup finish was seventh.

Great Britain’s Lizzy Yarnold, who won the last two Olympic titles, retired in 2018.

In 2014, Uhlaender finished fourth at the Olympics, .04 of a second behind Nikitina for bronze. Nikitina was later stripped of her medal in 2017 as part of the Russian doping scheme during the Sochi Games, but was reinstated two months later by the Court of Arbitration for Sport, citing insufficient evidence.

Uhlaender plans to retire from competition after Beijing and pursue a bachelor’s degree.

Curtis, a 32-year-old former heptathlete who first converted to bobsled, was second in the U.S. rankings, edging Megan Henry for the last Olympic women’s spot. Curtis completed basic training for the U.S. Air Force in August 2020.

Blaser, a 32-year-old former decathlete at the University of Idaho, was the top-ranked American man this season — 28th in the world — despite being passed over for World Cups to start the campaign in favor of the more accomplished John Daly and Austin Florian. It’s the first time the U.S. will not have multiple male skeleton sliders at the Olympics.

Latvian Martins Dukurs won his 11th World Cup season title. At 37, he’s still seeking a first Olympic gold after silvers in 2010 and 2014 and a fourth-place finish in 2018. A slider from the host nation won the last three golds, boosted by more experience on the Olympic track.

China’s top slider, Geng Wenqiang, is 12th in this season’s standings (with one three-way-tie for a victory), one spot below 2018 Olympic champ Yun Sungbin.

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