Germany’s Jacqueline Lölling is the overall winner in the 2017/2018 women’s skeleton BMW IBSF World Cup. In front of a home crowd at the final race at Königssee ice arena (GER), she celebrated her fourth World Cup win of the Olympic season to successfully defend her title. Jacqueline Lölling, who was back in fourth place after the first World Cup heat, set the fastest time on the second run to climb back to the top of the field. Following the two heats, she held a 0.18-second lead over Tina Hermann (GER) in second place. Janine Flock of Austria (0.27 seconds back) ended the World Cup finale in third place.
Anna Fernstädt (GER), who was on track to take a surprise first place (and her first World Cup victory) after the first heat, eventually fell back to fifth place. Despite only competing in six World Cup races this winter, she still managed to finish tenth in the overall World Cup standings.
In the overall standings for the 2017/2018 BMW IBSF World Cup, Jacqueline Lölling (GER, 1,628 points) left her team mate Tina Hermann (GER, 1,504) trailing behind to secure her second overall win in a row. Elisabeth Vathje of Canada (1,470), who finished ninth in Königssee, took third place in the World Cup rankings.
Great Britain had mixed fortunes with Olympic Champion Lizzy Yarnold taking 4th but Laura Deas was 23rd and Madeline Smith 22nd in a field of 25. In the iBSF world rankings ahead of the Olympic Games Deas is ranked 8th and Yarnold 12th.
The 29-year-old clocked a combined time of 1 minute 44.48 seconds at the track where she won World Championship bronze a year ago, finishing 18 hundredths of a second from a repeat of that feat in the final World Cup race of the season.
"I'm super happy with my fourth place," said Yarnold, who was ninth in Switzerland last time out.
"It's been a mammoth team effort over many months and it's good to come in the top 10 in the overall World Cup rankings (Yarnold finished ninth).
"There's been many lows so I'm excited to finish the circuit on a high."
With half the field already having completed their first run in the original morning session, the International Bobsleigh & Skeleton Federation jury opted to cancel the initial race and remove all times from the leaderboard, with each of the 25 sliders eventually starting afresh after the completion of the men’s competition.
Laura Deas, who was the only Brit to have completed a run in the morning’s cancelled competition, missed the cut second time around after clocking 53.63 seconds in her first run of the rescheduled race.
Deas was 23rd on the day but was still the highest placed British slider in the World Cup season rankings as she finished seventh overall.
Maddy Smith celebrated her 23rd birthday on race day but she had to be content with 21st position on her third World Cup race of the season.
Smith, who was 17th in Igls in December and 13th in St Moritz seven days ago, produced a top 10 start of 5.09 seconds before ending with an overall down time of 53.40 as she also missed out on a second run.
Germany’s Jacqueline Loelling took gold for the fourth time this term to cement a second straight overall World Cup crown, with compatriot Tina Hermann coming second and Austria’s Janine Flock third.
In the men’s race, all three Brits made it through to a second run and all three improved dramatically second time around. Jerry Rice jumped from 20th to 14th and Marcus Wyatt moved from 17th at halfway to 12th at the end but it was Dom Parsons who made the biggest leap from one run to the next.
Parsons was 18th after his first heat but he held the lead for the longest stint of the session as he finished 11th – a result that saw the 30-year-old end the season 12th in the World Cup rankings.
Home favourite Axel Jungk pipped veteran Martins Dukurs to gold and there was more disappointment to follow for Dukurs as he was disqualified from last week’s race in St Moritz for a material violation.
As well promoting Parsons from joint fifth to equal fourth in Switzerland, Dukurs’ disqualification handed the overall World Cup crown to Sungbin Yun. The South Korean had won five of the previous seven races but had opted not to compete in Konigssee - a decision that had originally looked set to see him finish second in the overall standings for the third season running.
RacerReady will be reporting the results and views from the world cup races immediately the action finishes.
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