Best four-man bobsleigh finish for Brad Hall ends BBSA World Cup season on a high
Brad Hall’s best-ever four-man finish ensured the British Bobsleigh & Skeleton Association (BBSA) ended their international season on a positive note in Pyeongchang, South Korea.
Hall, who is in his first full season as driver, finished eighth overall and ahead of a host of top teams at the venue for next year’s Winter Olympics after clocking a combined time of 1:40.37, just 0.15 seconds away from a medal.
Bruce Tasker and rookies Sam Blanchet and Greg Cackett helped Hall record the joint third-fastest starts in both runs with times at the top of 4.91 and 4.89 seconds, despite never having competed together as a crew. At one stage they were holders of the start record on the Olympic track before being eclipsed by a Latvian crew by just 0.02 seconds.
Lamin Deen piloted the second GB crew of Mark Lewis-Francis, Ben Simons and Andrew Matthews to 18th spot.
Saturday’s two-man action saw Hall and Simons finish 19th, a spot ahead of Tasker and Toby Olubi. With World Junior Champion Mica McNeill recovering from concussion, there were no British sleds in Friday’s women’s race.
The climax to the international skeleton season saw Olympic champion Lizzy Yarnold finish fourth overall in the women’s race, just four hundredths of a second from third and nine hundredths from silver.
Fellow Brit Laura Deas placed joint ninth, while the men’s race saw University of Bath PhD student Dom Parsons and Jack Thomas finish 13th and 20th respectively.
The BBSA is based at the University of Bath, with athletes training in the EiS high-performance gym, on the indoor sprint track and on the UK’s only outdoor push-start track.
