Canada’s Justin Kripps and Alexander Kopacz have taken home a gold medal in the two-man bobsleigh at the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics.
They posted a cumulative time of 3:16.86 over their four runs in Pyeongchang, tying the German team of Francesco Friedrich and Thorsten Margis.
At first, driver Justin Kripps thought that he had won outright.
“When I crossed that line, and I managed to actually see the clock that said No. 1 – it’s pretty tough to see when you’re ripping up the breaking stretch – but just so excited and everybody started mobbing into the track,” Kripps said.
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“I saw the Germans and they were super excited, too. I was like, ‘Man, that’s nice. They’re really excited that we won.'”
“We’re all good friends. Once the mob kind of dispersed a little bit Thorsten was giving me a hug, he was in my ear and he was like, ‘It was three hundredths and two and then we tied.’ I was like, ‘We tied?’ It’s insane. Amazing.”
A Latvian team, Oskars Melbardis and Janis Strenga, won bronze.
Two other Canadian teams, Nick Poloniato and Jesse Lumsden, and Christopher Spring and Lascelles Brown, came in seventh and 10th place respectively.
Kripps came in fourth place in the two-man bobsleigh at the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi. He joins Pierre Lueders, who took gold at the 1998 Games in Nagano, Japan, as the only Canadians to top an Olympic podium in two-man. Lueders also won two-man silver at the 2006 Olympics in Turin, Italy, for the country’s other medal in the discipline.
Lueders’ 1998 win was the last time there was a tie for gold in the two-man event at the Winter Olympics.
–With files from the Canadian Press
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