BOBSLEIGH: Australia’s women’s bobsleigh team Astrid Radjenovic and Jana Pittman have completed two ‘solid’ runs on the opening day of their competition at the Sanki Sliding Centre in Rosa Khutor.

The pair are sitting in 14^th place in the 19 team field and are in reach of achieving an Australian best performance if they can move to 13th or better from the final two runs on Wednesday night.

They were in 15^th place after run 1 with a time of 58.62 seconds and a push time of 5.34s. They improved in run 2 (58.50s/5.35s) to move past Austria 1 team with their combined time of 1:57.12.

Conditions on the track were ‘slushy’ with steady rain falling and mild temperatures. It meant times for all teams were slower than at training.

It is the third Games as a bobsleigh pilot for 31-year-old Radjenovic who has been the trailblazer for the sport in Australia. She was pleased with her driving particularly the run 2 but can make a few adjustments for improved runs tomorrow.

“The second run was definitely a little stronger. We were hoping to be a few rankings higher at this point but we pushed pretty well and the driving was okay so I think our start list in the first run was the thing that really killed that time.

“We were 14^th to start and the ice really deteriorated in these conditions after the top 10 so our good push time didn’t really result in the fast downtime that we were after.”

Pittman as the brakewoman is also competing at her third Olympics but the first as a bobsleigh competitor. She is the first Australian woman to compete in both the Summer and Winter Olympics Games following her competing at Sydney 2000 and Athens 2004.

Pittman was ‘stoked’ with their push starts and believes they can still go a little bit faster tomorrow. The mum from Sydney was all smiles after her first day of competing as a Winter Olympian.

“It was amazing,” Pittman said. “It’s just so nice to do it with someone you care about and I think you push harder when the person in front is a friend of yours and knowing how hard she has worked for seven years to get here.

“It is a bit of a reality now as I am now officially a winter Olympian. I’m very grateful and it’s a pretty amazing opportunity.

“You can’t control the conditions and you can only do what you can do. She’s (Astrid) had a stellar performance it felt good in the back and we had a good night tonight so we just have to hope tomorrow we can pull out two solid runs and pull a couple of places.”

Radjenovic holds the best Australian result of 14^th at the Torino 2006 Games with was Kylie Reed. She was aiming for 11^th or 12^th before the Games so will look to move up a few places on the final day. Their best performance this season is 12^th at the St Moritz World Cup last month.

The American number one sled is leading the competition with pilot Elana Meyers and brakewoman Lauryn Williams having a combined time of 1:54.89. Meyers was a bronze medallist the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Games. Williams was previously a track star winning silver in the 100m at Athens 2004 and gold in the 4x100m relay at London 2012.

Canada 1 is 0.23 seconds back currently in the silver medal position and USA 2 is third.

Lolo Jones a two-time Olympic finalist in the 100m hurdles is the brakewoman for USA 3. They are currently in 11^th place.

Pittman, 31, said she and Jones had been talking athletics and laughing as they both warm-up like hurdlers.

“The bottom line is it’s the Olympics and you just do your best and we did that today. We didn’t everything we possibly could to be here at these Games so whatever the result tomorrow I’ll walk away extremely proud of Astrid and happy with our performance.”

Radjenovic is relishing the Sochi experience compared to previous Games.

“This is definitely much more enjoyable for me,” Radjenovic said. “I’ve had a better preparation, I’ve got a great teammate, our equipments pretty decent. I want to improve on my best result of 14^th from Torino so we’ll come out and try and do that tomorrow.”