Beijing Olympic champion Christopher Grotheer defended his lead in the overall World Cup with third place at the Skeleton World Cup in La Plagne, France.
The 31-year-old was 0.33 seconds behind the victorious South Korean Jung Seunggi on the 1992 Olympic track. British world champion Matt Weston came second. “After the first run, I was of course hoping for a little more. I wanted to attack forward, but I made a huge driving mistake in the middle part of the second run,” said overall World Cup winner Grotheer from BRC Thuringia, who shared third place with the Brit at the same time Marcus Wyatt had to share.
Felix Keisinger came in seventh, Felix Seibel came ninth. Olympic silver medalist Axel Jungk recorded one of his worst World Cup results with 13th place.
In the women’s race, German champion Jacqueline Pfeifer missed the podium by a hundredth of a second. “Annoying, like a hundredth, but a really good start to the season,” said Pfeifer, who came second in the 2018 Olympics in Pyeongchang under her birth name Lölling. She was only 0.10 seconds behind the victorious Brit Tabitha Stoecker. Directly behind Pfeifer, Beijing Olympic champion Hannah Neise came in fifth place. Multiple world champion Tina Hermann, who won the opening race in Beijing, came ninth. World champion Susanne Kreher, who was the fastest in training, had to miss the event at short notice due to illness.