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Hannah Neise after her fourth run
Photo: Christopher Neundorf / EPA
Skeleton Olympic champion Hannah Neise won the bronze medal at the World Championships in Winterberg.
Supported by the home fans, the 23-year-old showed an improvement in performance in the third run, but it was still not enough to win the title - also because of the weather.
Hallie Clarke surprisingly became world champion with a lead of 22 hundredths of a second over the Belgian Kim Meylemans.
The Canadian is only 19 years old and is therefore the youngest skeleton world champion in history.
"I had hoped that things would get better, but in the end I'm happy with the medal," said Neise, who was surprised by light snowfall shortly before her start.
“The weather was good the whole time today and it started snowing shortly before Hannah,” said national coach Christian Baude.
»That's bad luck, of course.
I'm very annoyed." It's the first medal for the German team at this World Cup.
With her coup, Clarke replaced Susanne Kreher on the World Cup throne, who only finished tenth in Winterberg.
After the third round, the 25-year-old was already far behind the leaders, even though she had started the decisive two runs in fifth place the day before.
The third German starter, Jacqueline Pfeifer, finished fifth.
In the men's race, Christopher Grotheer, Olympic champion in Beijing, will fight for his sixth world title on Saturday afternoon (from 2 p.m.), which would set a record.
Before the final two runs he leads the field by four hundredths of a second.
Axel Jungk is in fifth place at halftime.
Felix Kiesinger starts the race in seventh place.
On Saturday, the mixed team event concludes the skeleton title fights.
Bobsleigh races will take place until March 3rd.
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