From Igls, AUT
(February 12, 2023) – Both the four-man bobsled race and the season-long race for the four-man title came down to the final two runs in Igls, and it was a familiar face who walked away with both.
Coming into the day’s event, Germany’s Francesco Friedrich and Great Britain’s Brad Hall were separated by just 15 points, the difference from first to second place. Friedrich had won the previous day’s event to open that lead after Hall finished the event in second place.
But a Hall win on Sunday would once again tie the duo up, and if Hall won it would give both men the exact same number of wins, silvers, and a fourth place finish. The next tiebreaker, whoever had the best finish on the final race, would go to Hall if he could find his way to the top of the podium.
So it was with that that Friedrich opened up a miniscule .07 second lead over Hall after the first heat and Johannes Lochner, the last four-man pilot to win a World Cup title before Friedrich’s current streak, only .1 in third.
The second run saw Lochner take the lead with the two World Cup leaders to go. Lochner’s second run was enough to put him well ahead of anyone else, but wasn’t quite clean enough to get him in to the discussion with Friedrich and Hall.
Hall’s second run came next, and for all intents and purposes it was everything he could have done as a pilot. The team gave him the quickest start of the competition to that point and Hall rewarded them with an outstanding drive that only had a couple of miniscule things that could have been changed in it. After two heats, Hall had a .18 second advantage over Lochner.
And that left Francesco Friedrich, the winningest bobsledder of all time. The German had been injured throughout the second half of the season, but rallied for four-man gold in the World Championships in St. Moritz and was looking for one more big race out of his four-man crew.
He got it.
Team Friedrich gave him a 4.99 start, the fastest of the weekend’s two four-man races. Through the top half of his run Friedrich was clean as ever. However a skid out of Curve 9 briefly put the race in doubt. Friedrich’s time crept closer to Hall, but given the short nature of Igls, Hall ran out of time and Friedrich took gold, and the World Cup title.
The margin of victory was .19 from Friedrich to Hall. In the overall World Cup point tally, it was a mere 30 points.
Lochner took bronze, .16 ahead of Latvian Emils Cipulis, who had another outstanding race in his first full season as a World Cup pilot.
Markus Treichl finished fifth for the fifth time on the season, while Patrick Baumgartner and Michael Vogt tied for sixth.
In the overall points, Lochner finished the season in third, ahead of Treichl in fourth and Vogt in fifth.
In the race, the United States’ Frank Del Duca dropped two spots behind the tie for sixth on his second run, but an eighth place finish tied a career-best outside of the United States, and was a best ever finish in Europe.
Pat Norton, the lone Canadian pilot in the field, finished 16th, one spot ahead of USA’s Geoff Gadbois.
The IBSF World Cup tour heads to Sigulda to finish its season with a pair of two-man bobsled races.
Results:
| Pos | Names | Nation | Bib | Start 1 | Start 2 | Run 1 | Run 2 | Total |
| 1 | Friedrich / Margis / Bauer / Schüller | GER | 11 | 5.04 | 4.99 | 50.07 | 50.10 | 1:40.17 |
| 2 | Hall / Gulliver / Lawrence / Cackett | GBR | 9 | 5.06 | 5.02 | 50.14 | 50.22 | 1:40.36 |
| 3 | Lochner / Bauer / Bruckert / Rasp | GER | 8 | 5.08 | 5.09 | 50.17 | 50.37 | 1:40.54 |
| 4 | Cipulis / Springis / Miknis / Nemme | LAT | 4 | 5.02 | 5.02 | 50.36 | 50.34 | 1:40.70 |
| 5 | Treichl / Stepan / Sammer / Mitterer | AUT | 10 | 5.07 | 5.07 | 50.35 | 50.58 | 1:40.93 |
| 6 | Baumgartner / Fantazzini / Mircea / Bilotti | ITA | 7 | 5.13 | 5.11 | 50.47 | 50.50 | 1:40.97 |
| 6 | Vogt / Bieri / Weber / Michel | SUI | 6 | 5.10 | 5.10 | 50.46 | 50.51 | 1:40.97 |
| 8 | Del Duca / Adams / Christofferson / Mitchell | USA | 2 | 5.11 | 5.11 | 50.42 | 50.64 | 1:41.06 |
| 9 | Semmler / Schenk / Neumann / Wobeto | GER | 13 | 5.09 | 5.13 | 50.50 | 50.63 | 1:41.13 |
| 10 | Follador / Mariani / Jones / Hufschmid | SUI | 5 | 5.20 | 5.19 | 50.56 | 50.75 | 1:41.31 |
| 11 | Kalenda / Begbriss / Kaufmanis / Kleinbergs | LAT | 12 | 5.11 | 5.12 | 50.71 | 50.71 | 1:41.42 |
| 12 | Li / Ding / Ye / Wu | CHN | 15 | 5.08 | 5.10 | 50.62 | 50.80 | 1:41.42 |
| 13 | Rohner / Wäschle / Rolli / Hersperger | SUI | 16 | 5.15 | 5.14 | 50.82 | 50.69 | 1:41.51 |
| 14 | Dobes / Dobes / Prochazka / Wijas | CZE | 14 | 5.17 | 5.16 | 50.89 | 50.91 | 1:41.80 |
| 15 | Variola / Pagnini / Batti / Obou | ITA | 18 | 5.16 | 5.21 | 51.23 | 50.86 | 1:42.09 |
| 16 | Norton / Gosselin / Caixeiro / Ashley | CAN | 17 | 5.37 | 5.40 | 51.08 | 51.10 | 1:42.18 |
| 17 | Gadbois / Vissering / Rabic / Harris | USA | 1 | 5.34 | 5.36 | 51.00 | 51.28 | 1:42.28 |
| 18 | Tentea / Dinescu / Pacioianu / Iordache | ROU | 3 | 5.27 | 5.25 | 51.11 | 51.24 | 1:42.35 |
| 19 | Behounek / Bures / Svoboda / Hrazdil | CZE | 19 | 5.20 | 5.21 | 51.10 | 51.29 | 1:42.39 |
| 20 | Baechler / Ambs / Alais / Flaven | FRA | 20 | 5.49 | 5.53 | 51.86 | 51.79 | 1:43.65 |
| 21 | Silic / Nimac / Starek / Zelic | CRO | 21 | 5.90 | 52.81 |
