Olympic champion Christopher Grotheer's series of titles came to an end at the Skeleton World Championships in St. Moritz.
The 30-year-old finished the race on Friday after four runs in disappointing tenth place - and was still the best German.
4.14 seconds separated him from the new world champion Matt Weston.
"I'm absolutely disappointed, it was really, really bad," Grotheer said.
Briton Weston dominated the field.
Amedeo Bagnis (Italy) and Jung Seunggi (South Korea) in second and third were already around two seconds behind.
Meanwhile, Olympic silver medalist Axel Jungk had absolutely no chance and ended up in 18th place, 5.91 seconds behind.
Felix Keisinger (+5.09) and Cedric Renner (+5.81) finished twelfth and 16th.
"Like an amateur"
Grotheer was already far behind at half-time on Thursday, he said he drove “like an amateur”.
At this point in time, despite everything, he could still hope for a podium finish.
In the third run on Friday, however, Grotheer messed up the start and fell further back, only showing improvement in the fourth run - it didn't help anymore.
This marks the end of Grotheer's impressive series of recent major events.
Until the age of 27 he played more of a supporting role in international skeleton, then he won the titles at the two world championships in Altenberg in 2020 and 2021 and followed that up with Olympic gold in 2022 in Beijing.
The crash at the World Cup in St. Moritz was not announced this season.
Grotheer finished on the podium in five of the six World Cup races and leads the overall standings just ahead of Weston.
The women will start the decisive heats three and four on Friday afternoon, the starting point is completely different here: Susanne Kreher, without a World Cup victory so far, is clearly in the lead at half-time.
World champion Tina Hermann still has podium chances in fifth place.