Skeleton
IBSF
The Olympic season of the blue skeleton opens in the best way. In Igls, on the historic gut on the outskirts of Innsbruck, Valentina Margaglio took a splendid fifth place in the first round of the season valid for the World Cup.
Friday 19 November 2021 7 minutes reading time
The athlete from Alexandria, despite having recovered from a small foot injury remedied during the official training sessions held on the Yanqing Olympic track in China, today confirmed herself at the top of the world skeleton, thanks to two splendid thrusts that they allowed her to compensate for some mistakes made during the descents. The standard bearer of the Fiamme Azzurre, in fact, printed excellent chronometric references in the starting phase, earning very important cents in the first part of the short Austrian track. On the driven side, however, Valentina tried to defend herself by trying to draw clean lines to repel her rivals' attempt to recover. The conduct of the blue race allowed her to confirm the splendid result of the first descent, grabbing the TopFive for the third time in her career.
The race saw the success of the Russian Elena Nikitina, author of an extraordinary second push that allowed her to equal the starting record and to overcome by just 10 cents the Dutch Kimberley Bos who joined her in the place of honor after the first run. The Russian athlete thus obtained his 13th seal in the maximum skeleton circuit becoming the athlete with the most successes in the history of the World Cup. Dream partly vanished for the surprising Kim Meylemans who had closed the first heat in the lead. The 25-year-old Bavarian by birth but with a Belgian passport, was unable to repeat the extraordinary result of the inaugural descent, however, finishing in third position, giving herself and Belgium the first historic podium in the skeleton.
The very favorite German athletes who had so impressed in the pre-Olympic in October come out decidedly downsized. The best of the Teutonic battleship was Tina Hermann eighth, Loelling (eleventh) and Neise (eighteenth) out of ten.
Unlucky try instead for Alessia Crippa, the second blue in the race today. The young woman from Ossola did not pass the qualification cut for the second heat by just 1 cent, reaching twenty-first absolute position. Crippa has to complain about a series of mistakes made in the lower part of the Tyrolean track, without which he could easily have been at the start of the second and decisive descent.
In the morning in the men's race, comeback success for the timeless Alexander Tretiakov. The veteran of the Russian team, thanks to a very precise final heat, managed to print the best time of the day, beating the eternal rival Martins Dukurs who drove after the first descent by just 7 cents. For Tretiakov thus arrives the twenty-first career victory in the World Cup, while for Dukurs the calendar year 2021 continues to be confirmed as a negative year since in the last 6 races disputed he has never managed to get on the top step of the podium.
The top-three is completed by world champion Christopher Grotheer, 16 cents away from the top, who preceded compatriot Axel Jungk by one position on his return to the World Cup. Beyond the final result, the performances of the German athletes impressed above all in the fast sections, where they reached the highest speed peaks ever.
Worth noting is the excellent fifth position conquered by the young Russian Vladislav Semenov, author of the fourth time set during the decisive heat, and the excellent team performance for South Korea which placed 3 athletes in the first 9 positions, even if something more was expected from the Olympic champion Yun third after the first descent, and only sixth at the end of the two runs.
Good indications also came from the blue team, with Amedeo Bagnis fourteenth and Mattia Gaspari eighteenth confirming the progress made in the past season. Without paying too much attention to the placement, what is striking in the positive of the performance of the two Azzurri is the rather limited delay in relation to today's winner on a track where we remember that it is mainly the fundamental thrust that counts.
With these good injections of confidence, the team led by Maurizio Oioli looks forward to next weekend with optimism, where the second round of the World Cup will be held on the same track.
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