Second after the great

Zubkov's crew won silver at the World Championship

The best season in the history of Russian bobsleigh ended on a positive note. The four crew of the newly crowned World Cup winner Alexander Zubkov won silver medals at the World Championships, held on the track in Calgary. Previously, the best result of our bobsledders at world championships in the period after the collapse of the USSR was bronze, won by the crew of the same pilot Zubkov two years ago in Lake Placid.

The victory in the most popular and prestigious discipline of this sport was won by the German Andre Lange and his accelerators Rene Hoppe, Kevin Kuske and Martin Putze. Lange went down in history as the first pilot to win gold in the four-man world championships three seasons in a row. In total, Lange has four such titles - he won another top award in 2000. For most of this season, Andre has been in the shadows. He took bronze at cup starts in Igls and Altenberg, and then, due to health problems, missed two stages on the Olympic track in Cesane (Italy) and St. Moritz (Switzerland). And only in Lake Placid, where Zubkov finally secured victory in the overall standings, Lange was able to climb to the second step of the podium.

Great masters, as you know, reach peak form at the most important start of the season. Lange once again proved that he is rightfully considered one of the greatest athletes in bobsled history. The Germans in Calgary twice set a track record; their advantage over their closest pursuers before the final, fourth run was 22 hundredths of a second - quite a respectable head start by bobsleigh standards. In his final attempt, 31-year-old Lange only had to navigate the bean through an icy chute without making any obvious mistakes. In this race, the Germany-1 crew showed only the third time, but the previously obtained reserves were more than enough.

But in the fight for the remaining prizes, a dramatic battle unfolded. Alexander Zubkov, Sergey Golubev, Dmitry Stepushkin and Alexey Seliverstov after three attempts were inferior not only to the Germans, but also to the Canadian crew of Pierre Luders. In addition, the Swiss, led by Martin Annen, were breathing down the Russians’ backs. In the fourth heat, the teams started in reverse order of their placings. The Swiss made an excellent acceleration and eventually showed the best time in the attempt. The Russians faced the unpleasant prospect of being left without any medals at all, but Zubkov demonstrated skill and psychological stability. The Russians lost 0.06 seconds to Annen in the race, but still retained the overall third place.

Having completed the championship, Zubkov and company sat on a special podium next to the finish line, where the crews currently leading the final classification stand. A couple of minutes later, Alexander and his comrades joyfully threw their hands up, congratulating each other on the “silver” - the Canadian Luders did not clear the distance and lost his advantage over the Russians. The final protocol recorded an amazing density of results - Lange brought the silver medalists 0.3 seconds, but then the Russians were separated from the “maple leaves” by only 0.03 seconds, the crew from Canada, in turn, beat the Swiss medalists who remained below the line and even less - two hundredths of a second.

During this winter, we have never seen our guys as joyful as they were at the end of the competition in Calgary. Still, they perceived victories at the World Cup stages and winning this trophy more restrainedly, knowing about the periodic problems of their main competitors. Here is the injury of the American Todd Hayes, Andre Lange’s missed stages, and the difficult relationship with Martin Annen’s sponsors. “Silver” at the most important start of the season, perhaps, still weighs more than victory in the overall World Cup. In general, there were enough emotions in Calgary - both positive and negative. In the first attempt, Gatis Guts's bean turned over. The Latvians reached the finish line, hitting half of the ice chute with their heads and, to their chagrin, stopped performing there. British pilot Lee Johnson greatly amused the audience. Rejoicing at his local success (13th place), he performed a couple of spectacular acrobatic somersaults and made various faces at the television cameras.

The World Championship program also included skeleton competitions. In the absence of the 2003 silver medalist Ekaterina Mironova, who was expelled from the team on the eve of the tournament for repeated scandals, the best of the Russians, Anna Shevtsova, was content with only 16th place out of 22 participants. Among the men, Sergei Chudinov finished 21st; Konstantin Aladashvili was two lines lower, ahead of only four rivals, including the exotic representative of Bermuda.

Ilya TRISVIATSKY