From Winterberg, GER
(January 3, 2025) – Matt Weston had been close all season long. He’d won two bronzes in Pyeongchang, and followed them with silver medals in Yanqing, Altenberg, and Sigulda, and two of those silver medals were within .03 of Germany’s Christopher Grotheer, who had won the first four races.
But to kick off the new year in a very snowy Winterberg, Weston threw down a huge second run to come from behind and win his first gold of the season.
Weston trailed Austrian Samy Maier after the first heat by .04, with Ukraine’s Vladyslav Heraskevych and Germany’s Christopher Grotheer in the hunt for medals behind them. In the second heat, Grotheer put down the quickest run of the heat to that point to take the lead, a lead he would hold through Heraskevych’s second run with just Weston and Maier to go.
Through the 39 sliders in the first heat and the first 23 in the second, nobody had gone faster than a 56.80 on what was rather varying track conditions. Weston pushed off in his second heat with a race-quickest start, and from there he out-slid everyone by a bunch. His second downtime wasn’t just the quickest of the heat, but the quickest of the day by over a half of a second to take the lead with only Maier to go.
Maier’s second start was off the pace of Weston’s. Despite an otherwise very clean and quick slide, the Austrian was unable to match Weston’s pace anywhere along the 1330 meter track and finished in second, a half of a second behind the Brit.
The win for Weston was the eighth of his career, spread across five tracks now. The silver for Maier was his very first.
Grotheer held off Heraskevych for bronze, his fifth medal in five starts this season.
Despite missing out on a medal, Heraskevych matched a career-best finish with a fourth, just ahead of Felix Keisinger and Qinwei Lin, who tied for fifth.
Marcus Wyatt led the World Cup points coming into the race but couldn’t quite find the pace to get into the medals and finished eighth. Teammate Laurence Bostock made his return to the World Cup after a couple of seasons and finished 16th.
American Nick Tucker made his first start on the World Cup with the sixth quickest push of the first heat as he slid into 12th place. He dropped a pair of places in the second heat, but was the leading American in 14th place, tied with Korea’s Jisoo Kim.
For the first time this season the Untied States placed all three sliders in the second heat. On top of Tucker’s 14th place finish, Austin Florian placed two Americans in the top 20 with a 19th place finish. For the fifth time in six races this season, Dan Barefoot finished 21st.
Kyle Donsberger led the way for Canada in 32nd place in what was his first look at the track in Winterberg. Teammate Kyle Murray made his first international start since the 2021/2022 season and finished 39th.
Germany’s Axel Jungk was the first slider off the top in the first heat. He and his team protested the start, as there was effectively an unannounced delay. He was granted a re-run, but that re-run was slower than his first effort and he finished the first heat in 19th. His second effort was the fifth fastest of the second heat and moved him from 19th to tenth.
Australia’s Nick Timmings finished 25th as the top Australian.
After six races on the IBSF World Cup men’s skeleton season, Matt Weston leads Marcus Wyatt by 58 points. Christopher Grotheer, despite missing a race, sits third, while Samy Maier and Vladyslav Heraskevych round out the top five.
Results:
| Pos | Name | Nation | Bib | Start 1 | Start 2 | Run 1 | Run 2 | Total |
| 1 | Matt Weston | GBR | 10 | 5.15 | 4.86 | 56.84 | 56.28 | 1:53.12 |
| 2 | Samuel Maier | AUT | 3 | 5.22 | 5.10 | 56.80 | 56.90 | 1:53.70 |
| 3 | Christopher Grotheer | GER | 7 | 5.30 | 5.19 | 56.96 | 57.04 | 1:54.00 |
| 4 | Vladyslav Heraskevych | UKR | 9 | 5.19 | 5.14 | 56.94 | 57.38 | 1:54.32 |
| 5 | Qinwei Lin | CHN | 19 | 5.07 | 4.94 | 57.34 | 57.05 | 1:54.39 |
| 5 | Felix Keisinger | GER | 8 | 5.17 | 5.10 | 57.05 | 57.34 | 1:54.39 |
| 7 | Mattia Gaspari | ITA | 16 | 5.23 | 5.16 | 57.09 | 57.36 | 1:54.45 |
| 8 | Marcus Wyatt | GBR | 5 | 5.20 | 5.02 | 57.32 | 57.40 | 1:54.72 |
| 9 | Amedeo Bagnis | ITA | 15 | 5.12 | 5.09 | 57.36 | 57.46 | 1:54.82 |
| 10 | Axel Jungk | GER | 1 | 5.36 | 5.27 | 57.89 | 57.12 | 1:55.01 |
| 11 | Lucas Defayet | FRA | 27 | 5.35 | 5.13 | 57.87 | 57.23 | 1:55.10 |
| 12 | Rasmus Johansen | DEN | 6 | 5.35 | 5.21 | 57.59 | 57.57 | 1:55.16 |
| 13 | Lukas Nydegger | GER | 17 | 5.26 | 5.40 | 57.22 | 57.99 | 1:55.21 |
| 14 | Jisoo Kim | KOR | 13 | 5.07 | 5.04 | 57.46 | 57.78 | 1:55.24 |
| 14 | Nicholas Tucker | USA | 30 | 5.13 | 5.17 | 57.44 | 57.80 | 1:55.24 |
| 16 | Laurence Bostock | GBR | 24 | 5.11 | 5.10 | 57.69 | 57.59 | 1:55.28 |
| 17 | Wenaho Chen | CHN | 2 | 5.18 | 5.34 | 57.42 | 58.21 | 1:55.63 |
| 18 | Haifeng Zhu | CHN | 18 | 5.11 | 5.25 | 57.54 | 58.28 | 1:55.82 |
| 19 | Austin Florian | USA | 11 | 5.23 | 5.38 | 57.62 | 58.22 | 1:55.84 |
| 20 | Zheng Yin | CHN | 4 | 5.50 | 5.23 | 58.28 | 58.05 | 1:56.33 |
| 21 | Daniel Barefoot | USA | 12 | 5.37 | 5.40 | 58.04 | 58.44 | 1:56.48 |
| 22 | Livio Summermatter | SUI | 32 | 5.29 | 5.21 | 58.36 | 58.27 | 1:56.63 |
| 23 | Colin Freeling | BEL | 38 | 5.55 | 5.43 | 58.47 | 58.21 | 1:56.68 |
| 24 | Nicholas Timmings | AUS | 36 | 5.51 | 5.37 | 58.52 | 58.23 | 1:56.75 |
| 25 | Alexander Schlintner | AUT | 20 | 5.44 | 5.74 | 58.25 | 58.97 | 1:57.22 |
| 26 | Vinzenz Buff | SUI | 14 | 5.70 | 58.63 | |||
| 27 | Giovanni Marchetti | ITA | 28 | 5.45 | 58.87 | |||
| 28 | Vladyslav Polyvach | POL | 21 | 5.57 | 59.07 | |||
| 29 | Chanhyuk Yeo | KOR | 25 | 5.41 | 59.23 | |||
| 30 | Joeri van Kuppeveld | NED | 22 | 5.49 | 59.33 | |||
| 31 | Yaroslav Lavreniuk | UKR | 29 | 5.80 | 59.48 | |||
| 32 | Kyle Donsberger | CAN | 34 | 5.49 | 59.52 | |||
| 33 | Peter Makrides | AUS | 26 | 5.51 | 59.62 | |||
| 34 | Timon Drahonovsky | CZE | 23 | 5.70 | 59.74 | |||
| 35 | Jonathan Yaw | MAS | 37 | 5.77 | 59.97 | |||
| 36 | Adrian Rodriguez | ESP | 35 | 6.17 | 60.34 | |||
| 37 | Akwasi Frimpong | GHA | 31 | 5.61 | 60.50 | |||
| 38 | Jared Firestone | ISR | 33 | 6.18 | 60.84 | |||
| 39 | Kyle Murray | CAN | 39 | 6.08 | 60.91 |