Defending Champion Martins Dukurs second in Sigulda ahead of Korea's Seunggi Jung
Sigulda (RWH) Almost 18 years after his first World Cup victory, skeleton athlete Tomass Dukurs (LAT) celebrated his second win in the race series at the BMW IBSF World Cup in Sigulda.
At the beginning of February 2004, the 40-year-old became the first Latvian to win the men's skeleton World Cup in Sigulda (LAT). At the end of December 2021, Tomass Dukurs celebrated victory number two at the same venue. The first to congratulate him was his younger brother Martins Dukurs (LAT), who had won the other 59 World Cups for Latvia since 2004. After the first race, the record World Champion, defending World Cup champion and ten-time overall winner was still on course for his World Cup victory number 60, but slipped off the start groove and ended up second, 0.06 seconds behind brother Tomass. By the way, in 2016 in St. Moritz the Dukurs brothers were on the podium together - as European Champions. In the World Cup ranking of the race, however, Korean Sungbin Yun was ahead at that time.
Third place at the BMW IBSF World Cup in Sigulda went to Seunggi Jung (KOR, 0.37 seconds back), who was on the World Cup podium for the first time.
Junior World Champion Evgenij Rukosuev (RUS) finished fourth in his first race in the BMW IBSF World Cup 2021/2022. The leader in the IBSF Intercontinental Cup narrowly missed his first podium finish by 0.01 seconds.
Vladyslav Herskevych (UKR) celebrated his best result in the BMW IBSF World Cup in Sigulda. The 22-year-old clocked the second best time in the second race run and moved up from 13th place after the first run to sixth place.
Yin Zheng of Olympic host China improved his own start record from February 2020 to 4.43 seconds in Sigulda. In the second run, however, the four-time European Cup winner in winter 2021/2022 could only narrowly avoid a crash in the lower part of the track and dropped back from eleventh to 19th place.
In the 2021/2022 BMW IBSF World Cup, World Champion Christopher Grotheer (GER, 1195 points) narrowly defended his lead after the sixth of the eight races of the season with eighth place in Sigulda. Martins Dukurs (LAT, 1173) is second overall ahead of Axel Jungk (GER, 1149), who finished twelfth in Sigulda.
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
