British duo disappoint in bobsleigh

Great Britain's hopes of winning a two-man bobsleigh medal are looking remote with Nicola Minichiello and Gillian Cooke 10th after two of the four runs.

The world champions are one place ahead of team-mates Paula Walker and Kelly Thomas, but both are more than one second behind leaders Canada 1.

A defiant Minichiello told BBC Sport: "We're still going for gold.

"On this track anything is possible. It is the ultimate sliding track. Let's see who is still standing at the end."

Minichiello and Cooke produced their fastest slide of 53.73 seconds on their second run at the Whistler Sliding Centre for a combined time of one minute, 47.58 and a 0.19-second advantage over Walker and Thomas.

Bobsleigh duo still thinking of gold

But it was not enough to lift them out of the 10th place they occupied after the first run and they are 1.38 seconds behind Canada 1 at the halfway stage.

However, British number one pilot Minichiello knows where she can make up some of the time.

"I am taking a skid out of turn one and it is killing our speed at the top," she explained.

"We'll analyse our performance and I'll sort out turn one and we'll be awesome on Wednesday."

Meanwhile, Walker was disappointed with her second drive, despite moving up from 14th to 11th with a 53.58 slide.

"That was one of our worst runs," said Walker. "We hit between turns four and five and skidded everywhere.

"But being in the winners' enclosure for so long made my day."

Canada's Kaillie Humphries and Heather Moyse led after the first run with a track record 53.19 seconds and lowered that to 53.01 for a combined time of 1:46.20.

That put them 0.13 seconds ahead of Erin Pac and Elana Meyers who guided United States 2 into the silver medal position with a second run of 53.05.

Germany 2 duo Cathleen Martini and Romy Logsch slipped to third, 0.02 ahead of Canada 2 and 0.04 in front of Germany 1.

Run three starts at 0100 GMT on Thursday with the final run scheduled to begin at 0215 GMT.

E-mail this to a friend

Printable version