From St. Moritz, SUI
(January 29, 2023) – Susanne Kreher and Christopher Grotheer won the second Skeleton Mixed Team world championship, holding off a pair of British teams to do so.
Italy’s Valentina Margaglio and Amedeo Bagnis had set the early time of record with a combined 2:25.51. Two days prior Margaglio had the second quickest run of the third heat, and Bagnis was the silver medalist in the men’s event.
That duo held onto the lead from the fifth starting position all the way until Great Britain’s Brogan Crowley and Craig Thompson edged them out by .19.
Canada’s Mimi Rahneva and Blake Enzie were next, and though Rahneva had the second quickest run for a woman in the competition, Enzie had a bumpy run down and the team fell to eventually sixth place.
The second British team, Laura Deas and newly crowned world champion Matt Weston were next, and Deas’s third quickest run for the women, combined with Weston’s quickest run for the men was enough to put them into the lead handily with only a few sleds to go.
After a tough pair of runs by USA’s Kelly Curtis and Austin Florian and a false start by Tina Herman for Germany it was down to the team of Kreher and Grotheer.
Kreher, the women’s world champion, had the fast time of the competition for the women. Grotheer had trouble early in his run, but was able to put together a clean bottom part of his run which was enough to give Germany gold.
Kreher and Grotheer’s margin of victory was .13 over Deas and Weston, with Crowley and Thompson .41 back in third.
Margaglio and Bagnis finished fourth, China’s Dan Zhao and Wengang Yan fifth with Canada’s Rahneva and Enzie sixth.
The event was held under a new format with a timing aspect to it, where a clock counts down, there’s a brief pause (like in track meets), then the horn goes and lights go green. If the skeleton sled moves at all during the last couple seconds of the countdown, an athlete is assessed a “false start” penalty of .5 plus however early they jumped (so for a .1 second jump, it’s a .6 penalty).
Despite not being able to have much practice time with the new reaction start, Kreher had a decent start that she chalked up, in part, to luck.
“We couldn’t practice the reaction start so much before,” Kreher said. “”So I was a bit nervous. That I had such a good reaction time was maybe also a bit of luck. Watching Christopher do his run was already very exciting for me.”
Crowley, one half of the bronze medalist team, agreed about the excitement of the race.
“I was quite nervous before the new reaction start. But it makes the race even more interesting with an extra level of excitement.”
Canada’s Mimi Rahneva enjoyed the new format, especially the team aspect.
“It’s really interesting to have a team component of skeleton,” she said. “Usually we’re all by ourselves…I mean we have a team but down the track it’s just you, but this is a really cool way to combine a team effort and I had a lot of fun!”
Teammate Blake Enzie agreed.
“I thought it was almost more fun than the actual race! Coming from team sports it’s nice to be back into a team sport, and I probably had the best run I’d had while I’ve been here!”
Like their Canadian counterparts, the duo of Clarke and Blaser enjoyed the new format.
“I thought it was probably better than all of my race runs,” Clarke said of her effort. “It was a lot of fun!”
Blaser continued, “It’s a fun experience to start working in this competition format. We’ve never done this reaction start before and I think there was a lot to be learned from that and getting that first one out of the way.”
Results:
| Pos | Names | Nation | Bib | Reac W | Time W | Reac M | Time M | Total |
| 1 | Kreher / Grotheer | GER 1 | 18 | 0.07 | 73.25 | 0.11 | 71.66 | 2:24.91 |
| 2 | Dead / Weston | GBR 1 | 15 | 0.16 | 73.60 | 0.09 | 71.44 | 2:25.04 |
| 3 | Crowley / Thompson | GBR 2 | 13 | 0.15 | 73.62 | 0.12 | 71.70 | 2:25.32 |
| 4 | Margaglio / Bagnis | ITA 1 | 5 | 0.13 | 74.00 | 0.17 | 71.51 | 2:25.51 |
| 5 | Zhao / Yan | CHN 1 | 12 | 0.09 | 73.86 | 0.09 | 71.97 | 2:25.83 |
| 6 | Rahneva / Enzie | CAN 1 | 14 | 0.26 | 73.51 | 0.21 | 72.47 | 2:25.98 |
| 7 | Hermann / Keisinger | GER 2 | 17 | (+).03 | 74.39 | 0.17 | 71.82 | 2:26.21 |
| 8 | Clarke / Blaser | USA 2 | 11 | 0.10 | 74.00 | 0.18 | 72.66 | 2:26.66 |
| 9 | Li / Chen | CHN 2 | 10 | 0.09 | 74.69 | 0.10 | 72.12 | 2:26.81 |
| 10 | Crippa / Gaspari | ITA 2 | 6 | 0.16 | 74.85 | 0.10 | 71.97 | 2:26.82 |
| 11 | Channell / Neufeldt | CAN 2 | 9 | 0.12 | 73.78 | 0.34 | 73.26 | 2:27.04 |
| 12 | Curtis / Florian | USA 1 | 16 | 0.18 | 75.26 | 0.22 | 72.11 | 2:27.37 |
| 13 | Schmeid / Sieber | SUI 1 | 3 | 0.09 | 75.34 | 0.16 | 72.57 | 2:27.91 |
| 14 | Saulite / Auer | AUT 1 | 7 | 0.15 | 75.50 | (+).15 | 73.04 | 2:28.54 |
| 15 | Narracott / Makrides | AUS 1 | 2 | 0.13 | 74.56 | 0.13 | 74.49 | 2:29.05 |
| 16 | Fernstädt / Drahonovsky | CZE 1 | 8 | 0.17 | 74.94 | 0.21 | 74.51 | 2:29.45 |
| 17 | Eigenmann / JJ Buff | LIE 1 | 4 | 0.14 | 76.15 | 0.15 | 73.69 | 2:29.84 |
| 18 | Torres Quevedo / Rodriguez | ESP 1 | 1 | 0.16 | 77.83 | 0.15 | 75.30 | 2:33.13 |
