GB finish 4th in Altenberg 2-man

Brad Hall and Taylor Lawrence finished fourth in the final 2-man World Cup bobsleigh race before next week’s World Championships.

Hall and Taylor missed a fifth 2-man medal of the season by just six hundredths of a second in a race that doubled as the European Championships.

World Cup points leader Johannes Lochner took both the race win and continental crown, ahead of Switzerland’s Michael Vogt, with Germany’s double Olympic Champion Francesco Friedrich beating the Brits to third.

Having won 2-man silver in Altenberg seven days ago, Hall and Lawrence clocked a two-run time of 1 minute 51.94 seconds at the same track on Saturday afternoon.

They were the fastest starters in Run 1, having gone 5.26 off the top, and the second quickest in Run 2 in 5.25 but it wasn’t quite enough to continue their record of a medal in every two-man race together this season.

A medal would have been GB’s first in 2-man bobsleigh at the European Championships since 1968.

The results sees GB stay third in the world rankings with six of this year’s eight World Cup races complete. Lochner leads the way from Friedrich, with Hall 76 points ahead of another German, Christoph Hafer, in fourth.

Attention now turns to the 4-man competition tomorrow afternoon, before the teams head to Switzerland for the World Championships.

Hall and Lawrence will be joined by Arran Gulliver and Greg Cackett in the 4-man race from 1.30pm GMT tomorrow as they look to win back-to-back gold medals following success at the same track last week.

The bobsleigh events at the World Championships in St Moritz begin in a week’s time, with the 2-man competition scheduled for this coming Saturday and Sunday and the 4-man for the following weekend.