Park City (RWH) Karlien Sleper from the Netherlands is the winner of the fourth and fifth season races of the IBSF women's monobob series 2019/2020.
In Park City (USA), the 27-year-old won the first race by 1.18 seconds ahead of Australian Ashleigh Werner and local hero Vanessa D’Arpino from the USA. With 54.47 seconds, Karlien Sleper now holds the current monobob track record in Park City. "I am so excited that I won here", said the Dutchwoman after the first race. “Park City is a new track for me and there were only two training days. The jury only told me after the race that I had set a track record.”
The former track and field athlete and bobsleigh push athlete won the second race even 2.36 seconds ahead of D’Arpino and the Brazilian Marina Silva Tuono. „You can see it at the start times that it was a snow race so pushing the sled was hard“, Karlien Sleper said after the second race. „But it was a great atmosphere and I enjoyed it.“ In her seven monobob races to date in the past two winters, she has been on the podium five times.
The two victories were the first for Karlien Sleper at an official race of the IBSF Women’s Monobob series.
Competing in Park City was, amongst others, also Lake Kwaza, who won four World Cup medals as a push-athlete of the US team, including a victory with pilot Elana Meyers Taylor 2019 in Lake Placid.
The next two of the eight women’s monobob races this season are scheduled for March 7 and 8, 2020 in La Plagne (FRA). The final will be on April 3rd in Lake Placid (USA). Women's monobob is part of the Olympic programme for the first time at the Winter Games in Beijing (CHN) in 2022. © RWH2020
All Photos: Girts Kehris
