Ducours and Boss are close to structural World Cup titles

WINTERBERG, Germany (AFP) – Latvian Martins Ducours clinched his 60th career skeleton world championship victory on Friday, closing his 11th league title last season.

The Dukurs outscored Germany’s Axel Jungk by the fewest margins – a hundredth of a second. The Dukurs won the singles in 56.36 seconds, Jungk crossed the finish line in 56.37 and Alexander Tretyakov of Russia third in 56.41.

Germany’s Christopher Grother, who started the day at the top of the World Cup standings, finished only ninth and fell to third place on the season list. Dukurs leads with 1,398 points, Jungk is second with 1,359 and Grotheer with 1,347.

The Dukurs only need a fourth place to claim the overall World Cup title next weekend in St Moritz, Switzerland.

Andrew Placer was 22nd for the men, while Austin Florian was 24th. The men’s race was shortened to one lap instead of the usual two after race officials ruled that proper track sweeping procedures had not been followed in what should have been race one.

On the women’s side, Kimberly Boss claimed her second victory of the season and almost became the first sliding from the Netherlands – men or women – to become the all-time world champion. Boss finished the race with a time of 1: 56.04, a quarter of a second ahead of Germany’s Jacqueline Loehling and about half a second ahead of Russia’s Elena Nikitina, third.

Boss extended his lead over Nikitina to 68 points with one run to go. Boss won the title in eighth place in St. Moritz. She was in the top six in six of the season’s opening seven races.

Megan Henry was in 10th place for the United States, while Kelly Curtis was in 13th place. Katie Olander did not run on Friday, although she is expected to return for the final in St. Moritz – a race that could decide which Americans make up the Olympic squad.

———

Learn more about the PA Winter Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/winter-olympics In https://twitter.com/AP-sport

Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.