LAKE PLACID, N.Y. — Take the season’s biggest races in the sliding sports of bobsled, skeleton and luge, meaning either or the world championships, and there have been 59 instances of sliders from one place sweeping the podium.
Austria did it twice. Poland did it once.
The other 56 times, it was German sliders. That includes some instances of East German and West German sliders combining for those sweeps before the countries unified, but you get the idea.
Surprise! The Germans are poised to do it again in the two-man world bobsled championships at snowy, windy and blustery Lake Placid, with Francesco Friedrich, Johannes Lochner and Adam Ammour driving into the top three spots after the first two heats of this year’s title race on Saturday.
Friedrich and Alexander Schüller lead in 1 minute, 49.75 seconds. Lochner and Georg Fleischhauer are 0.14 seconds back in second place, while Ammour and Benedikt Hertel are 0.33 seconds off the lead in third. The final two runs are Sunday.
“The third run,” Friedrich said, “is the decision.”
He knows better than anyone what it takes. Friedrich has won the world two-man title eight times in the last nine competitions, plus has two Olympic two-man gold medals in that span. He’s the undisputed king of sliding, a winner of 105 World Cup, world championship and Olympic races in his career, and is two runs away from No. 106.
“We have to be good on every track of the world if we want to be world champions,” Friedrich said. “Lake Placid, I was here for the first time in 2012 and it’s a really tough track. I’ve had great rhythm and when you know how to take the rhythm it’s a very, very excellent track.”
Right on the German heels: Frank Del Duca and Charlie Volker of the U.S., a half-second back of Friedrich and only 0.17 seconds off a medal position.
Del Duca is bidding to be the first U.S. men’s pilot to win a medal at worlds since the late Steve Holcomb drove to a four-man gold at St. Moritz in 2013.
“We put ourselves in contention and, you know, we’re obviously hungry for more,” Del Duca said. “But when we look at how we executed, I think it was pretty solid. Definitely something to build off. And let’s see if we can chip away and snag a medal.”
The women’s monobob competition starts later Saturday with the first two heats of that event.
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