Olympic Champion Yun with track record and second place, Tretiakov finishes third
Königssee (RWH) One week after his first World Cup victory, skeleton athlete Alexander Gassner (GER) celebrated his second. In the penultimate race of the BMW IBSF World Cup 2020/2021, Gassner beat Olympic champion Sungbin Yun from Korea at Königssee (GER).
Yun, who had set a new track record (49.90 seconds) in the first race run at Königssee, thus stood on the podium in his both World Cup starts this winter. In second place, the 2018 overall World Cup champion was 0.04 seconds behind winner Gassner.
Third place went to European Champion Alexander Tretiakov (RUS, 0.13 seconds back), who was seventh after the first race run at Königssee.
The athletes made it very exciting in the seventh of the eight races of the BMW IBSF World Cup: After the first run, the athletes in first to sixth place were separated by just 0.09 seconds. World Cup defending champion Martins Dukurs from Latvia, sixth in the intermediate classification, fell far behind in the second run and finished the race in 11th place.
In the overall ranking of the BMW IBSF World Cup 2020/2021 Alexander Gassner with his victory significantly shortened the gap to the still leading Martins Dukurs (LAT, 1456 points). Gassner (GER, 1369 points) is now only 60 points behind instead of 149 before. Tomass Dukurs (LAT 1226), eighth at Koenigssee, goes into the final in Innsbruck (AUT, 29 January) in third place overall.
For more detailed information including athlete profiles and World Cup results please visit ibsf.org. Photos for editorial use can be found at Flickr. ©RWH2021
Photos: IBSF / Viesturs Lacis