British two-man bobsleigh team Brad Hall and Taylor Lawrence suffered a disappointing start to their Olympic campaign – now sitting eighth at the halfway point of the competition.
Their combined time of 1:51:54 after two heats leaves them 1.64 seconds off the pace of German team Johannes Lochner and Georg Fleischhauer in top spot with two more German teams occupying the other podium places before Tuesday’s medal-deciding runs.
Hall and Lawrence, who is a serving Royal Marine, were unable to improve on their run-one position after a heavy bump near the top of the track on their second heat led to more errors and a struggle to make up time.
“It was definitely a very difficult day. The track is extremely difficult to be consistent down, especially in a bobsleigh,” said Hall, who is GB’s most decorated bobsleigh World Cup pilot.
“We didn’t quite do well enough on our second run, we lost quite a bit of time to some and gained on others. We need to go back to the drawing board and see what we can do better tomorrow.”
Pilot Hall will also lead the charge for a medal in the four-man event later this week. While Germany’s Francesco Friedrich, who is currently third, is aiming to do the treble double – win two and four-man gold for the third Games in a row.
Meanwhile, Adele Nicoll said she was “speechless” after a disappointing final run meant she finished 18th in the women’s monobob.
The Welsh slider, who is also a three-time British shot put champion, produced three solid runs before clocking 1:01:03, which she described as “the worst run of my life”, in the fourth heat.
“I know everything that could have gone wrong did go wrong and it is just one of those nightmare performances that I’ll hopefully move on from. I need to pull it together for the two-woman,” she said.
American Elana Meyers Taylor, 41, took gold to become the oldest Olympic champion at a Winter Games while Germany’s Laura Nolte was second and another American, Kaillie Armbruster Humphries was third.