Team GB face uphill task for four-man bobsleigh medal скачать в хорошем качестве

Team GB face uphill task for four-man bobsleigh medal

Team GB face uphill task for four-man bobsleigh medal Team GB face an uphill task to win an Olympic medal in the four-man bobsleigh as they sit seventh at the halfway point in a race where three teams crashed. Pilot Brad Hall had showcased why the British team are medal contenders in Cortina with a brilliant first run of 54.39 seconds, which placed them third. But he was left looking stunned and emotional after they dropped off the pace in the second, losing four places in the standings. They now sit 0.23secs off the bronze medal position before Sunday's podium-deciding heats. "I'm a bit lost for words to be honest," Hall told BBC Sport. "We had a really good first run and the second run just got away from us and I honestly don't really know where. It felt like a nice run to me but we bled some time." The three German teams remain the ones to beat and they occupy the top three spots with Johannes Lochner, who won two-man gold earlier this week, leading the charge with an overall time of 1:48:61. There was a long delay to competition at the Cortina sliding track after Austria suffered a crash during heat two, with one of the athletes treated for a lengthy period on the ice before being stretchered off. GB's Greg Crackett said Austrian pilot Jakob Mandlbauer had gone to hospital but was moving and "seemed to be alright". Action resumed after about a 20-minute delay but, with the track now slower because of the rising temperature, the British team were unable to find the speed of their first run and currently sit on 1:49:43.Under the pale winter sky of Cortina d'Ampezzo, the ice told two different stories for Team GB. In the first, there was poetry. Brad Hall’s sled did not so much descend the track as slice through it. The steel runners hummed, the corners obeyed, and the clock blinked back a dazzling 54.39 seconds. For a fleeting, electric moment, the British four-man crew stood third—nestled among giants, daring to believe. Gloves thumped the sled. Fists punched the alpine air. In that instant, history felt close enough to touch. In the second story, the ice bit back. By the halfway mark of the Olympic four-man bobsleigh, Team GB sit seventh—0.23 seconds off bronze. In bobsleigh terms, that is the width of a breath, the blink of an eye, the faintest tremor in a steering line. Yet it is also an uphill climb against gravity’s unforgiving arithmetic. “I’m a bit lost for words,” Hall admitted afterward, the emotion flickering across his face. The second run had felt clean. No obvious skid, no jarring mistake. And yet the clock disagreed. Fifty-five point zero four seconds—only the 12th-fastest of the heat. Four places slipped away, as if swallowed by the mountain itself. Above them, the German machine rolls on. Three sleds. Three podium places. Clinical, relentless, precise. At the front stands Johannes Lochner, already crowned in the two-man earlier in the Games, guiding his crew with the assurance of a man fluent in ice. Germany’s dominance is no accident; it is culture, infrastructure, repetition carved into frozen walls over generations. But medals are not awarded for reputation. They are decided in the margins—those fragile, flickering margins where confidence can surge or splinter. The drama of the day was not confined to time sheets. A long, uneasy silence settled over the track when Austria crashed in heat two. For 20 minutes, competition paused as medics tended to the stricken athlete. The sport’s beauty—its speed, its choreography—gave way to its danger. Ice is indifferent. It does not distinguish between favourite and outsider. When racing resumed, the temperature had risen. The track slowed. Conditions shifted. Bobsleigh is a science experiment conducted at 80 miles per hour; a degree of warmth can rewrite outcomes. The British sled, so sharp and alive in run one, could not rediscover that earlier bite. France crashed. Trinidad and Tobago crashed too—piloted by Axel Brown, the Harrogate-born driver chasing his own Olympic story. Both crews walked away. Relief rippled through the finish area. Survival, first. Medals, second. For Hall, this moment is layered with history. He finished 12th in the two-man earlier in the week—respectable, but not the statement he craved. Four years ago in Beijing, his four-man crew took sixth. Close enough to glimpse the podium, far enough to feel its absence. Since then, the trajectory has bent upward.