Beijing silver for Hall & Cackett

Brad Hall and Greg Cackett made it two medals in a day for the British teams at the Olympic test in event on Monday as they won a superb silver in the 2-man bobsleigh in Beijing.

Hall and Cackett followed skeleton slider Marcus Wyatt in finishing second on their first race on the Olympic track in China as a three-week international camp nears its conclusion.

With less than four months to go until the Olympic Winter Games, the result is a huge boost to Hall and his team as they look to become the first British 2-man Olympic medalists since Tony Nash and Robin Dixon won gold in Innsbruck 57 years ago.

Hall and Cackett clocked a combined time of 2 minutes 0.87 seconds to finish just seven hundredths of a second behind Germany’s reigning double Olympic Champion and 11-time World Champion, Francesco Friedrich, as they put down a significant marker ahead of February’s global showpiece.

The British pair sat third at halfway but jumped up a spot at the end of the second run, beating Russia’s Rostislav Gaitiukevich into third and Canada’s Justin Kripps, who shared Olympic gold with Friedrich in 2018, into fourth.

Hall and Cackett set the third fastest start time in Heat 1 and the fourth quickest in Heat 2 as they matched their World Cup silver medal together in Igls in January 2020. 

Mica McNeill pilots a team in the Women’s Bobsleigh at 3am tomorrow.