Wrexham Born Laura Deas Wins World Cup Bronze . . . After Producing Her Best Result In Almost Four Years

By Paul Jones

Welsh Olympic star Laura Deas continued British Skeleton’s stunning start to the season.  The Wrexham Wrexham-born Deas came away with a World Cup bronze in the United States on Thursday evening, making an excellent start to her World Cup campaign.

Deas and Marcus Wyatt made it five medals in eight days for the team following Wyatt’s own gold, silver for Brogan Crowley and bronze for Matt Weston in Whistler last week.

The result was Deas’ best for almost four years, with her last World Cup medal coming in Calgary in February 2019, 12 months after she won Olympic bronze in PyeongChang.

The 34-year-old clocked a combined time of 1 minute 38.55 seconds to finish just three hundredths behind Germany’s reigning World Cup Champion Tina Hermann in second and 13 hundredths shy of race winner Mirela Rahneva in Park City.

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“It was a brilliant feeling to be back on the podium after a long time away,” said Deas.

“This feels like it’s been a long time coming. We’ve put in a lot of hard yards over the last few years to make this happen.

“I’m really happy with the way I pushed and I’m really pleased with the whole race today. There were some difficult weather conditions in Run 2, which made things even more challenging. It was great to be able to put down the quickest second run and climb a few spots when it mattered.”

Deas began the new Olympic cycle with a 12^th-place finish in Whistler a week ago but she was outstanding in the States as she produced the fastest time of Run 2 to move up from fifth at halfway in Utah.

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She beat all three Olympic medalists from Beijing nine months ago and looked comfortable throughout despite not having raced in Park City for over five years.

Deas was the fourth fastest starter in each heat, having been fourth and then eighth quickest off the top a week ago.

Crowley placed 13^th in a time of 1 minute 39.72. Last week’s silver medalist sat 11^th at halfway and appeared set to jump up the standings midway through Run 2 but lost time further down the track to drop back behind both Anna Fernstaedt and Kendall Wesenberg.

The 28-year-old did top the charts in terms of start times, though, backing up the second fastest start in Run 1 (4.91 seconds) with the quickest of the day in Run 2 (4.88).

In the men’s race, Wyatt moved up from fourth after the first run to make it back-to-back World Cup medals for the first time in his career. The fastest start of Heat 1 and the second quickest of Heat 2 helped him finish fully four tenths of a second ahead of Germany’s Felix Keisinger in fourth.

Laura Deas won World Cup bronze. Pic: British Bobsleigh and Skeleton.

Wyatt clocked 1 minute 36.63 seconds as reigning Olympic and World Champion Christopher Grotheer took gold and South Korea’s Seunggi Jung silver.

The result ensures 30-year-old Wyatt retains the World Cup points leader’s yellow jersey heading into a two-week-long break before Race No3 in Lake Placid on December 16^th.

Fellow Brits Laurence Bostock and Matt Weston finished 14^th and 18^th respectively, with Weston popping a spur at the start of Run 1 to end his chances of positive result almost before the race had begun.

That mistake meant Weston was the slowest of all 19 athletes in Run 1 but he showed his class to produce the fourth fastest time of Run 2 off the second fastest start.

Bostock was racing in just his fifth World Cup competition and neither he, nor Weston, had ever raced at Park City before.