Sprinter Simon Wulff celebrated his first victory in his first bobsleigh World Cup race. Francesco Friedrich's new pusher won clearly with the two-time double Olympic champion in the Altenberg ice track. The duo dominated the World Cup opener with a lead of 0.41 seconds ahead of Johannes Lochner, who raced with Georg Fleischhauer. The brothers Adam and Issam Ammour rounded off the German triple success.
Start record at World Cup debut
In his first World Cup run, push athlete Wulff set a start record of 5.07 seconds with the exceptional pilot Friedrich. The previous record (5.11 seconds) from January 6, 2018 belonged to Canadian Justin Kripps, who won the two-man bobsleigh Olympic gold medal at the same time as Friedrich at the Pyeongchang Olympics shortly afterwards.
"I was really relieved today, otherwise I would say that I'm relaxed in sport and nothing gets to my nerves that quickly. Today was a completely new atmosphere, a new sport," said Wulff, while Friedrich said: "Everything went well, we can go into the four-man race relaxed."
Wulff's commitment pays off
There had been trouble in the run-up to the World Cup because Friedrich's long-time push athlete Thorsten Margis, of all people, had switched to Bavarian rival Lochner. Long before that, Friedrich is said to have tried to poach Lochner's push athlete Fleischhauer.
The signing of newcomer Wulff turned out to be a brilliant sporting move for Friedrich in this tense situation. At 10.06 seconds, he is the fourth-fastest German 100-meter sprinter and could become very important for the bobsleigh dominator with a view to the 2026 Olympics in Cortina D'Ampezzo and Milan.
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