Skeleton thriller

Flock remains on course for gold after run two

Janine Flock(Bild: GEPA)

Janine Flock has good reason to hope that she will crown her skeleton career with her first Olympic medal. After two of four runs, the 36-year-old Tyrolean leads ahead of the two Germans Susanne Kreher and Jacqueline Pfeifer – with a lead of 0.04 and 0.13 seconds respectively. The showdown will take place on Saturday (6 p.m.)! 

"Now the strong German women are chasing me, so it's going to be very, very exciting," said Flock. "But that's competition, and I'm looking forward to tomorrow when it continues." She enjoys racing in Cortina. "It's really a pleasure, the track is in very good condition." The four-time European champion said she had put in a very good performance on the ice. "I just want to go with the flow and enjoy the runs tomorrow."

(Bild: AP/Alessandra Tarantino)

Successful start with number 1
In the first run, Flock was the fastest with a track record (57.22) in the new "Eugenio Monti" ice channel – 0.02 seconds ahead of Kreher and 0.19 ahead of Britain's Tabitha Stoecker. The latter was two tenths of a second faster than the Austrian at the start, but Flock, who chose start number 1 herself, found the best line. "It's wonderful to be able to open an Olympic race with the number one," said Flock at her fourth Games.

  Her rivals all made mistakes in the first run, but found their stride in the second. Pfeifer snatched the track record from Flock with a time of 57.18. "The second run wasn't perfect, but it was much better. I can still ski much better and I'm relaxed for tomorrow," said the 31-year-old, who, like Flock, is a three-time overall World Cup winner and two-time season winner.

Flock squeezed out another two hundredths of a second on former world champion Kreher with the second-best time. After two runs, British co-favorites Stoecker and Freya Tarbit are already 0.53 and 0.68 seconds behind in fifth and sixth place. Overall World Cup winner Kim Meylemans from Belgium (+0.84) finished behind China's Zhao Dan (+0.69) in eighth place.

Health problems overcome
A concussion suffered during training in early January had robbed Flock of the chance to win her fourth overall World Cup title. In addition, the Tyrolean had recently been plagued by recurring minor back problems. "I gave myself enough time," Flock explained on ORF. "That's why I'm in good shape now." Flock was able to rely on her skiing skills on day one in Cortina anyway.

At the 2018 Olympics in Pyeongchang, Flock was second at the halfway point and even led after three of four runs. In the end, however, she missed out on a medal by two hundredths of a second. At her Olympic debut in Sochi in 2014 and in Beijing in 2022, Flock had to bury her medal hopes after the first day, eventually finishing ninth and tenth respectively. Neise won gold four years ago in China, somewhat surprisingly.