Junior World Champion Kim Kalicki wins silver, bronze goes to Christine De Bruin
Altenberg (RWH) Kaillie Humphries of the USA has won the 2020 World Championships in the 2-woman bobsleigh. At the BMW IBSF World Championships in Altenberg (GER), the 2010 and 2014 Olympic Champion and her brake athlete Lauren Gibbs celebrated the pilot’s third title.
Securing the best result for World Championship hosts Germany, the Junior World Champions Kim Kalicki/Kira Lipperheide came within 0.37 seconds of the US pairing and won World Championship silver. Kim Kalicki thus became the first Junior World Champion in the 2-woman bobsleigh to also win a World Championship medal in the same year. Christine De Bruin/Kristen Bujnowski of Canada equalled their performance from Whistler last year and finished third (1.06 seconds back).
Kaillie Humphries won her first two World Championship titles (2012 and 2013) for Canada. Her World Championship gold in Altenberg is also the third for Team USA: The pilot Elana Meyers Taylor won the 2-woman bobsleigh title in 2015 and 2017.
The Olympic Champion and defending World Champion Mariama Jamanka (GER), who went into the final heat in third place with her brake woman Annika Drazek, only just missed out on a World Championship medal by finishing a close fourth in Altenberg. The overall World Cup winner Stephanie Schneider (GER), who was racing with Leonie Fiebig in Altenberg, finished fifth ahead of the European Champions Nadezhda Sergeeva/Elena Mamedova (RUS) in sixth.
The best result for a 2-woman bobsleigh pairing from future Olympic hosts China went to Qing Ying/Jiani Du in tenth. ©RWH2020
>> Result after heat two of four
Photos: IBSF / Viesturs Lacis
Kaillie Humphries (USA, Olympic Champion 2010 and 2014, World Champion 2012, 2013, 2020)
„This is one of my top favourite tracks. I love Altenberg! It’s a very challenging track and demands a lot of focus and respect. This is worth all of the risk and I am so happy it worked!“
Kim Kalicki (GER, 2020 Junior World Champion)
“You can’t compare the silver medal to the Junior World Championship title, it’s a completely different ball game. We didn’t think anything like this could happen here. We managed four decent runs and showed what we were capable of. The fourth run was actually really relaxed as we knew we only had to go down one more time.”
Christine De Bruin (CAN, World Championships bronze medallist 2019 and 2020, Third in 2020 Overall World Cup)
„We knew it’s gonna be a big battle. All are very competetive athletes. We just tried to be very consistent and to do the exact same things in every simgle run. And that’s what we did.“
