Coltman sets PB with top 6
Amelia Coltman smashed her personal best as she made the World Cup wider podium for the first time on Friday afternoon.
Coltman bettered her previous highest finish of 13th from the season opener in Beijing by finishing sixth in the Women’s Skeleton in Lillehammer.
The 27-year-old set a two-run time of 1 minute 46.26 seconds, holding her position from the first heat and beating Canada’s Hallie Clark to the final place on the wider podium by one hundredth of a second.
Only previous World Cup, World Championship or Olympic medalists got the better of Coltman in Norway as she blew her last three results of 24th, 22nd and 20th out of the water in the fifth World Cup competition of the year and the eighth of her career.
Fellow Brits Tabby Stoecker and Freya Tarbit finished 12th and 16th respectively in a 32-strong field.
Stoecker sat 17th after a disappointing first run but again showed her potential by setting the second quickest time of all 25 sleds in the final heat.
In the men’s race earlier in the day, Jacob Salisbury matched Coltman in setting a PB as he finished 10th, with Matt Weston eighth, Craig Thompson 12th and Marcus Wyatt 31st after he popped a spur at the start of his first run.
There is bobsleigh action in Lillehammer with monobob and 2-man competition on Saturday and women’s and 4-man races on Sunday but the British Skeleton team now move on to Sigulda in Latvia for World Cup 6 and the European Championships a week today.
The circuit then takes a week off before heading to Altenberg in Germany for the penultimate World Cup race of the season on February 16.
Did you know?
Lillehammer was the venue for the 1994 Olympic Winter Games but the Games didn’t feature men’s or women’s skeleton.
This week is the first time a World Cup skeleton event has been held in Lillehammer since the IBSF’s top-tier competition expanded to combine both bobsleigh and skeleton back in 2004/05.
