Junior World Championships - Konigssee Race Reports, January 2009

The Junior World Championships were held at the challenging 1.25 km long Konigssee track in Germany, which is located adjacent to a National Park along Lake Konigssee. To be eligible to compete, all athletes must be under the age of 26 and drivers need to have competed in at least three FIBT competitions (such as the Europa Cup) on two different tracks. Under these criteria, Great Britain entered entered two teams in the 2-Man Bobsleigh and one team in the Women's Bobsleigh Race.

2-Man Bobsleigh Race

Twenty one teams in total entered the 2-Man bobsleigh race, which was won convincingly by the Russian pairing of Dmitry Abramovitch / Sergey Prudnikov from the German pairings of Manuel Machata / Richard Adjei-Otto and Benjamin Schmid / Florian Becke.
Both the Great Britain teams crashed in the race. Kenny Simm / Jamie Devlin had consistently been around 14th fastest in training, but finished last after crashing, with Jamie coming out of the bobsleigh before it crossed the finish line. Despite crashing Steve Stewart / Roger Smith did manage to beat the Jamaican pairing of Hannukkah Wallace / Marvin Dixon, to finish in 19th position.

Women's Bobsleigh Race

The Women's race was won very convincingly by Swiss girls Sabina Hafner / Hanne Schenk who finished 0.9 seconds ahead of 2nd placed Stefanie Szczurek / Christin Senkel of Germany with Olga Fedorova / Liudmila Udobkina of Russia finishing 3rd.
Great Britain's Paula Walker / Paula Hendriks recorded start times within a tenth of a second of the winner, however, the Paula's finished up in 8th position, behind the wonderfully named Russian driver Ekaterina Kostromina after losing much time sliding sideways down a straight on the first run. There were thirteen entries in total, two of whom crashed and were classified as DNF (Did Not Finish).


Race Reports written by Mark Carter - Performance Coordinator