Stoecker seals silver after Weston wins
Tabby Stoecker won skeleton World Cup silver in Lillehammer on Friday afternoon as team-mate Freya Tarbit finished fifth in the second race of the Olympic season.
Stoecker claimed the third individual World Cup medal of her career after clocking a two-run time of 1 minute 44.49 seconds in Norway, just a few hours after fellow Brit Matt Weston won gold at the same venue.
The 25-year-old, who previously won gold in La Plagne and bronze in Igls in December 2023, improved on her fifth-place finish from the season opener in Italy last month as she moved up to fourth in the Overall World Cup standings.
Stoecker was only beaten by Janine Flock, the reigning Overall World Cup Champion and a slider with 96 more World Cup races under her belt, as the Austrian came down 0.18 seconds in front after beating the Brit by just one hundredth of a second in the second run.
Former trapeze artist Stoecker was the only athlete to record a start time under five seconds, doing so in both heats after a 4.96 start in Run 1 and a 4.92 effort that was just three hundredths off the track’s start record in Run 2.
She ended the race seventh hundredths of a second ahead of Belgium’s European Champion, Kim Meylemans, who took bronze, and 0.29 seconds clear of Germany’s Jacqueline Pfeifer, who won the first race of the campaign in Cortina.
The medal marks the second of the season for Stoecker after she and Marcus Wyatt took team gold in Cortina.
Tabby Stoecker won silver in the second race of the season
Tarbit finished exactly three tenths of a second away from what would have been the third World Cup medal of her own career, following gold in PyeongChang and bronze in Beijing last season, as she clocked a combined time of 1 minute 44.86.
The 25-year-old ex long-jumper was fourth after the first run, just a fraction behind her team-mate, and made the wider podium for the top six by beating the likes of former World Champion Hallie Clarke, reigning World Champion Kimberley Bos and current Olympic Champion Hannah Neise.
Tarbit, who was 17th in Cortina in late November, moves up to ninth in the World Cup rankings, just one place lower than where she finished last season.
Amelia Coltman, who was 10th in Cortina, came 14th after clocking 1 minute 45.29 seconds at the track where she won European Championship sliver last season.
Coltman came down in a three-way tie for ninth in Run 1 in a time of 52.58 seconds but slipped down the final standings after going 52.71 in Run 2.
There is another instalment of skeleton action today when the team race takes place at 4pm GMT.
Stocker joins forces with Wyatt again, while Tarbit teams up with Jacob Salisbury.
The circuit then heads to Latvia for a double header on Thursday and Friday, before breaking for the Christmas period.
