Holcomb, Greubel Poser take golds in Lake Placid World Cup
LAKE PLACID, N.Y. (AP) Steven Holcomb wins a World Cup bobsled gold medal on home ice nearly every year, and Jamie Gruebel Poser may be following that same path.
It was a U.S. bobsled sweep at Mount Van Hoevenberg on Friday. Gruebel Poser and Aja Evans held off U.S. teammates Elana Meyers Taylor and Lolo Jones to win the women's race, and Holcomb teamed with Sam McGuffie to win the two-man race - his sixth gold in the last seven international two-man races on his home track.
''Every single person out here wanted to win today,'' Holcomb said. ''To have a victory, to be on top, no matter where it is, it's nice; just getting back to that mentality of winning again. It is a mentality. Putting together two runs. These cold conditions make the ice very hard and very slippery. Being the veteran on the tour, my experience paid off today.''
For Greubel Poser, it was the second straight year she drove to a World Cup win at Lake Placid.
She and Evans finished their two runs on a frigid day in 1 minute, 52.02 seconds, taking advantage of super-hard, super-fast ice to set a track record along the way. Meyers Taylor and Jones were 0.14 seconds back in 1:52.16, while the Canadian team of Olympic champion Kaillie Humphries and Cynthia Appiah was third in 1:53.05.
''It just shows how strong Team USA is,'' Meyers Taylor said.
Gruebel Poser and Evans broke the track record in their first heat, finishing in 55.81. That's a significant shaving off the former mark, 56.28 set by Meyers Taylor and Cherrelle Garrett two years ago.
''We were so excited to see that time when we crossed the finish line,'' Greubel Poser said. ''I was screaming, we were just so excited to know that we went that fast. We literally gave everything we had at the top.''
And in the men's race, only U.S. and Canadian sleds reached the podium as well - a rare World Cup bobsled day with nothing but North Americans in the top three spots.
Holcomb and McGuffie won in 1:49.47. Canada took silver and bronze, with the team of World Cup points leader Justin Kripps and Jesse Lumsden finishing in 1:49.74, 0.01 ahead of Chris Spring and Lascelles Brown.
The four-person race is Saturday, and Meyers Taylor is expected to be one of the drivers in the field - pushed by a team that will include her husband, Nic Taylor. She would be competing against male drivers for the third time in World Cup competition, after doing so twice in the 2014-15 season and finishing 13th and 16th.
