Winter Olympics 2022 - Laura Nolte re-establishes German sliding dominance with 2-woman bobsleigh gold

Normality resumed in the Winter Olympic sliding events in Beijing, as Germany’s Laura Nolte guided her sled to gold in the two-woman bobsleigh. Leading from start to finish, she teamed up with Deborah Levi to beat PyeongChang 2018 champion Mariama Jamanka by a huge margin of 0.77 seconds, with Elana Meyers Taylor taking bronze for the USA — her fifth Olympic medal. Ad/> A disappointing campaign for Britain’s Mica McNeill and Montell Douglas ended with a their best heat, to finish 17th.

/> Beijing 2022‘Swinging with the big names’ – Hall's GB team in bobsleigh contention after heats6 HOURS AGO Nolte, the world bronze medalist, went into day two half a second up on her German team-mate Jamanka, with Meyers Taylor 0.24 seconds further back. But Christine de Bruin was also a contender for Canada, as was Canadian-turned-US great Kaillie Humphries. As the leader, she was first out for heat three.

She flew out from the start with a clean run to set a new track record of 1:00.70, which was going to make her sled incredibly difficult to beat. Jamanka, teaming up with Alexandra Burghardt, also produced her quickest run, but she had fallen back to 0.78 seconds behind Nolte by the time she crossed the finish line. It was enough to hold off the challenge from Meyers Taylor and Sylvia Hoffman, though, and the American also fell further back from the Germans.

De Bruin was not able to challenge the podium spots, meaning the top three were all-but secure barring a disaster in the final run. McNeill and Douglas performed well below expectations on day one and it did not go much better on the second, with errors in the first couple of turns, meaning they were not able to move up from second bottom. But the British pair saved their best run