From Igls, AUT
(December 17, 2023) – As far as racing years go for Francesco Friedrich, 2023 was a relatively tough one. He did have a pile of gold medals in four-man bobsled, but dealt with injury for part of the 2022/2023 season and for the first part of the 2023/2024 season had been overshadowed by teammate Johannes Lochner.
But in the European Championships, the final race of the 2023 calendar year, Friedrich once again came out on top with a commanding performance.
Friedrich and his team opened up a .09 second advantage over Lochner and company on the strength of a heat-fastest start. In third was the Latvian team led by Emils Cipulis, who matched Friedrich’s start but couldnt’t quite match the sliding pace of the two Germans.
In the second heat Cipulis, the world championships co-silver medalist, cemented another medal in a championship as he took the lead with the two German teams to go.
Lochner was next. His team gave him a start .01 quicker than their first, and Lochner appeared to clean up what small mistakes he had in his first run. It was more than enough for the lead.
Then it was Friedrich’s turn. His team gave him the only sub-five second start of the competition. He answered that with the fastest run of the heat to take the two fastest runs of the competition on his way to gold in the race and in the European championships.
The gold for Friedrich was the 29th four-man bobsled gold medal of his career. Despite that dominance in the discipline, it was just his second European Championship title.
Adam Ammour continued his solid start to the season with a fourth place finish. Swiss pilot Simon Friedli moved up from seventh in the first heat to finish fifth, which tied his career-best finish in the four-man sled.
There was a three-way tie for sixth place. Kaizhi Sun of China, Cedric Follador of Switzerland, and Great Britain’s Brad Hall all matched 1:41.76 combined downtimes to pile in for sixth.
The race marked Hall (and most of his team’s) comeback from injury, he moved up from ninth in the first heat to tie with Sun and Follador for the spot.
The event doubled as the European Championships, in which the top six mostly remained unchanged. Sun, of China, was not eligible for EC honors but otherwise the results of the race were the results for the championship.
Frank Del Duca’s team had a small issue getting in the sled in the first heat, an issue that kept them back in 16th after the first heat. On their second run, the Americans had a more conservative start but all got in clean. The drive was good enough to move up a spot to 15th.
The race was marred by two crashes, one by Dominik Dvorak and one by Jakob Mandlbauer. Dvorak’s run was going well enough that he found himself tied with Del Duca for 16th despite the crash. However, his push bar broke in the crash and he was forced to push the sled body to start, resulting in him dropping a place to 17th.
At the halfway point of the 2023/2024 IBSF World Cup four-man season, Johannes Lochner is your point leader by 10 over Francesco Friedrich. Emils Cipulis is third, with Patrick Baumgartner and Kaizhi Sun rounding out the top five.
Results:
| Pos | Names | Nation | Bib | Start 1 | Start 2 | Run 1 | Run 2 | Total |
| 1 | Friedrich / Bauer / Schüller / Straub | GER | 6 | 5.02 | 4.99 | 50.43 | 50.46 | 1:40.89 |
| 2 | Lochner / Bruckert / Tasche / Fleischhauer | GER | 11 | 5.04 | 5.03 | 50.52 | 50.51 | 1:41.03 |
| 3 | Cipulis / Springis / Miknis / Lindenblats | LAT | 9 | 5.02 | 5.02 | 50.60 | 50.75 | 1:41.35 |
| 4 | Ammour / Ammour / Hertel / Schenk | GER | 17 | 5.04 | 5.04 | 50.71 | 50.75 | 1:41.46 |
| 5 | Friedli / Moser / Rolli / Haas | SUI | 8 | 5.11 | 5.10 | 50.89 | 50.83 | 1:41.72 |
| 6 | Hall / Gulliver / Lawrence / Cackett | GBR | 21 | 5.12 | 5.13 | 50.94 | 50.82 | 1:41.76 |
| 6 | Follador / Vögele / Hufschmid / Jones | SUI | 7 | 5.15 | 5.13 | 50.90 | 50.86 | 1:41.76 |
| 6 | Sun / Ding / Ye / Zhen | CHN | 13 | 5.13 | 5.11 | 50.88 | 50.88 | 1:41.76 |
| 9 | Treichl / Stepan / Sammer / Huber | AUT | 10 | 5.07 | 5.09 | 50.88 | 50.96 | 1:41.84 |
| 10 | Li / Wei / Zhu / Wu | CHN | 12 | 5.19 | 5.18 | 50.98 | 51.09 | 1:42.07 |
| 11 | Baumgartner / Fantazzini / Mircea / Bilotti | ITA | 4 | 5.18 | 5.19 | 51.00 | 51.11 | 1:42.11 |
| 12 | Kalenda / Ungurs / Kaufmanis / Klava | LAT | 14 | 5.12 | 5.11 | 51.09 | 51.07 | 1:42.16 |
| 13 | Variola / Obou / Batti / Colantoni | ITA | 3 | 5.20 | 5.21 | 51.05 | 51.15 | 1:42.20 |
| 14 | Tentea / Dinescu / Pacioianu / Iordache | ROU | 16 | 5.18 | 5.22 | 51.07 | 51.17 | 1:42.24 |
| 15 | Del Duca / Williamson / Mitchell / Joseph | USA | 20 | 5.19 | 5.28 | 51.13 | 51.24 | 1:42.37 |
| 16 | Vogt / Gyger / Orsinger / Michel | SUI | 5 | 5.24 | 5.39 | 51.04 | 51.34 | 1:42.38 |
| 17 | Dvorak / Dobes / Bures / Zalesky | CZE | 2 | 5.15 | 5.45 | 51.13 | 51.75 | 1:42.88 |
| 18 | Dobes / Havelka / Prochazka / Rapp | CZE | 19 | 5.22 | 5.25 | 51.60 | 51.49 | 1:43.09 |
| 19 | Behounek / Fomenko / Wijas / Vila | CZE | 1 | 5.27 | 5.27 | 51.54 | 51.68 | 1:43.22 |
| 20 | Boron / Sienkiewicz / Sosna / Boinski | POL | 18 | 5.29 | 5.37 | 52.01 | 52.06 | 1:44.07 |
| 21 | Mandlbauer / Wiener / Hanschitz / Nicols-Bardi | AUT | 15 | 5.27 | 53.48 |