Australia remains on course to take two skeleton athletes to the Vancouver Winter Olympics, with results this weekend maintaining the country’s ranking in the top six in the world. Competing on the Torino 2006 Olympic track, Emma Lincoln-Smith produced her third top ten result for the season, finishing in eighth place
Australia remains on course to take two skeleton athletes to the Vancouver Winter Olympics, with results this weekend maintaining the country’s ranking in the top six in the world.
Competing on the Torino 2006 Olympic track in Cesana, Emma Lincoln-Smith produced her third top ten result for the season, finishing in eighth place.
The Sydney 24-year-old recorded a time of one minute 59.01 seconds, 1.55 seconds behind British slider Shelley Rudman who took out the gold medal.
Fellow AIS scholarship holder Michelle Steele was three places further back in 11th position, 2.03 seconds behind the winner.
The results reinforce Australia’s ranking of number five in the world.
The top two skeleton nations are allocated three places in the 2010 Games field, with the next four countries earning two spots.
Meanwhile, in an emphatic demonstration of the depth of Australia’s skeleton stocks, AIS scholarship holder Melissa Hoar has been the dominant slider in the second tier Intercontinental Cup series in Europe, winning two of the first three events and collecting a silver medal in the other.
AIS team-mate Lucy Chaffer has produced three top five results, finishing fifth in the opening single-run contests of the season then fourth in this weekend’s Konigssee race, after leading the first run times.
Hoar sits on top of the Intercontinental Cup rankings on 435 points, 45 ahead of Germany’s Kathleen Lorenz, while Chaffer is in fifth position on 350 points.
The next women's World Cup will be held in Winterberg, Germany, on December 12.
Two Australian men also represented Australia in skeleton at an America’s Cup series of races in Park City over the weekend, with former mountain bike rider John Farrow making the podium in just his second event.
Farrow finished equal third alongside US slider Chris Burgess, both 0.78 seconds behind race winner Kyle Tress, also of the USA.
The Sydney 27-year-old also slid to ninth place in his debut race, and ended the weekend with a fifth place in the final journey down the track.
Former handball player Anthony Deane also contested all three Park City races, his best result a seventh place in the opening event.
