After the conclusion of the Olympic two-man bobsleigh races on Sunday (Feb. 21), Germany's Andre Lange and Kevin Kuske had the gold medal that makes them the most successful Olympic bobsleigh athletes ever, and Canada's Pierre Lueders had the runs he'd been looking for.
After seizing the lead in the second heat of racing at the Whistler Sliding Centre, Lange and Kuske didn't falter in Sunday's (Feb. 21) final two runs, claiming their fourth Olympic gold medal with a performance that their closest competitors described as flawless. Kuske embraced his longtime pilot in their sled as the two slid triumphantly toward the finish dock.
"It's just a beautiful moment, it has not really sunk in yet," pilot Lange said through a translator after securing the two-man gold with a total time of three minutes, 26.65 seconds, 22 hundredths of a second better than their German teammates Thomas Florschuetz and Richard Adjei.
"To be honest with you, we also made a couple of minor mistakes, we just managed to cover those up and get down safely," Lange added.
Lange and Kuske, who won gold in the two-man event at the 2006 Olympics as well as winning the four-man event in the 2006 and 2002 Games, set a speed record for the event on the Whistler track by reaching 150.6 kilometres per hour in their first heat. Florschuetz and Adjei nearly equalled that mark on Sunday, speeding through the track at 150.4 kilometres per hour in the third heat, and they set a track record with their first-run time of 51.57 seconds on Saturday (Feb. 20).
But they couldn't catch up to their teammates, who started Sunday's runs by reaching 151 kilometres per hour and kept increasing their lead through the final two runs.
"Andre's a great pilot, (with) so much experience. He didn't have mistakes," Adjei said.
Russia's Alexsandr Zubkov and Alexey Voevoda won the bronze medal with their field-leading start times and a total time 86 hundredths of a second behind Lange and Kuske.
"We did all we can," Voevoda said, adding that the pair was very happy to win bronze. "The German pilots are too good, they were much better than us."
Lueders, the two-man Olympic co-champion in 1998 and silver medallist in 2006, slid with converted CFL player Jesse Lumsden into fifth place overall, stepping up one spot with improved runs on Sunday after sitting sixth following Saturday's first heats.
"Both the runs today were the runs that we were looking for, and the runs that I wanted yesterday," Lueders said, adding that some changes made to the pair's sled including different runners and their frame of mind seemed to help.
"We just said, 'We're not going to finish sixth, we're going to make the guys that are ahead of us earn it,' and they did. We didn't leave anything to chance, no regrets, and that's where we are today," said Lueders, who is Canada's most decorated bobsleigh pilot.
Lueders and Lumsden slid into the race lead briefly on Sunday evening, with a final run that made Lueders punch his fist over his sled after crossing the finish line while Lumsden patted the pilot's helmet. The top American tandem of Steven Holcomb and Curtis Tomasevicz then slipped behind the Canadian pair, allowing Lueders and Lumsden to climb to fifth, while the Americans, who sat fourth after the first two heats, dropped to sixth overall.
Ivo Rueegg and Cedric Grand took the lead from the Canadians and wound up finishing fourth overall, driving the only Swiss sled in the race after teammates Beat Hefti a favourite going into the event and Daniel Schmid withdrew after crashes in official training runs.
The Canadian pair sat 25 hundredths of a second behind the Russians in the bronze-medal position after the first two heats. Lueders said he entered the final runs thinking, as always, that the pair could potentially win a medal.
"All I was thinking about was having a consistent run and just trying to put pressure on the guys that are coming after you. Especially on this track, it's not over until everybody's crossed the finish line, as we've seen. I just knew that if we just had a good start and let everything out on the start and let the sled run a little more, and see if we could catch a couple guys, and we did," Lueders said.
The five-time Olympian praised the progress and intensity of his rookie brakeman, Lumsden, whom Lueders said makes him feel "a whole lot younger than I am."
"I wanted to be on the podium. I didn't come here for the jacket, I didn't come here for the experience, I came here to be on the podium. So I am disappointed, yeah, absolutely, but at the same time I feel very honoured to be in the position that I am," Lumsden said.
Lyndon Rush, pilot of the Canada 1 sled, redeemed himself after crashing in the second heat, delivering the sixth- and eighth-fastest times of the third and fourth heats, respectively, to shake off the post-crash cobwebs.
"I don't think that my runs tonight were great, but they felt great, just to get them out of the way. I was really trying to be strong mentally, but I still wasn't on my A game today. I was driving a little bit scared, but I got that out of the way, and I think that if we work hard we can do well in the four-man," Rush said.
Rush, who won three World Cup medals this season, slid with David Bissett on Sunday instead of his usual two-man partner Lascelles Brown. The pilot said Brown was really sore after Saturday's crash and they played it safe by resting him in advance of the four-man races.
Sunday's final two runs were a little more sedate than the opening two heats, which featured several crashes, including Rush's rollover after a mistake in Curve 13, which is dubbed 50-50 for its chances of emerging unscathed.
