Stoecker seals Overall Bronze
Tabby Stoecker has become the first British woman to win an Overall Skeleton World Cup medal for 11 years after finishing third in the season standings.
Stoecker’s brilliant bronze is Britain’s first female podium place since double Olympic gold medalist Lizzy Yarnold won silver in 2015.
The 25-year-old former trapeze artist becomes the fourth British woman to win an overall medal - awarded for the total number of points an athlete secures over the World Cup season - following in the footsteps of Yarnold and her fellow Olympic medalists Shelley Rudman and Alex Coomber.
Stoecker’s success takes the total number of British overall medal winners to seven, with current team-mates Matt Weston and Marcus Wyatt and 2004 and 2008 champion Kristan Bromley having also tasted success on this stage.
Stoecker placed sixth in the final race of the season in Altenberg this morning and, with defending champion Janine Flock, who sat third prior to today’s event, absent, she jumped up a spot to finish with 1236 points from seven races.
Anna Fernstaedt was the biggest threat to Stoecker’s place on the podium prior to the race but the British slider finished a place above her Czech rival to extend the gap between them and ensure she joined Belgium’s Kim Meylemans and Germany’s Jacqueline Pfeifer on the overall podium.
Stoecker clocked a two-run time of 1 minute 55.43 seconds in race number seven as she registered a fifth top six finish of the season a week after she won European Championship silver in St Moritz.
She ends the World Cup campaign with silver medals in Lillehammer and Sigulda; a fourth-place finish in Moritz; fifth in the season opener in Cortina; sixth here in Altenberg; eighth spot in Winterberg, and just a single outlier with 15th in the second Sigulda race.
“I’m overjoyed to finish my season with a wider podium place here and finishing third in the overall standings,” said Stoecker, who also won two team golds with Marcus Wyatt in Cortina and Lillehammer before Christmas.
I can’t quite believe that I’ve just won an overall medal! It’s not necessarily something I was aiming for this season - I just wanted to prepare well for the Cortina Olympics.
“To see all that preparation be so fruitful now is amazing. I’m really grateful to my team-mates and the all the coaches and support staff who’ve helped me get to this position. I can’t wait to stand on the podium with a Crystal Globe in my hands!”
GB finished the circuit with three female athletes in the top 11 in the world as Amelia Coltman and Freya Tarbit both placed equal ninth with Nicole Silveira on 944 points but lost out to the Brazilian on a count back system that favours a slider’s best result of the season and then their most recent. Silveira and Coltman were again equal courtesy of their best efforts being a bronze medal apiece but Silveira took the higher placing courtesy of her result today being better than Coltman’s. Tarbit’s top result was a fifth-place finish in Lillehammer.
Coltman placed 12th today and Tarbit ninth as they came agonisingly close to repeating last season’s team achievement of three sliders in the top 10 after Coltman was fourth, Stoecker seventh and Tarbit eighth in 2025.
It would have marked just the third time in history that GB have recorded such a hat-trick, with the only other occasion outside 2025 coming in 2015, when Laura Deas and Rose McGrandle finished fifth and seventh respectively in Yarnold’s silver medal winning season.
Tarbit clocked a time of 1 minute 55.68 seconds today, with Coltman 0.36 seconds back in 1.56.04.
Pfeifer took gold in the individual race ahead of compatriot Susane Kreher but bronze for Meylemans was enough for her to cement top sport overall after she entered the final competition 130 points clear.
There is more skeleton action later today, as Weston and Wyatt go in the men’s race at 12pm, before the mixed team event brings the curtain down on the World Cup calendar at 4pm.