From Lake Placid, USA
(March 9, 2025) – As they have so many times before, Germany’s Francesco Friedrich and Johannes Lochner dueled it out in a championship race, this time in the two-man World Championship in Lake Placid.
Friedrich entered the second day of two-man with a .14 second advantage over Lochner, with Adam Ammour in the third German sled well back and looking to hold off the United States’ Frank Del Duca for the final podium spot.
The track was quick in the third heat. As the first sled off, Friedrich and brakeman Alexander Schüller set the fastest start of the race to that point and Friedrich drove the duo to 54.60 single-run downtime, besting the 22-year-old track record held by Pierre Leuders by .01.
Up next were Lochner and Georg Fleischhauer. Their start nearly mirrored Friedrich and Schüller, and Lochner used that to close the gap to the leaders as he lowered the track record by .08 to make it a .06 second race going into the fourth and final heat.
In that final heat, Lochner and Fleishhauer were again quick off the top, this time the fastest of anyone in the race with a 5.01 start. From there, Lochner drove a nearly flawless final run with the quick split all the way down to take the lead from Ammour and put pressure on Friedrich.
But Friedrich has been in this position before. He and Schüller were .01 off the start set by Lochner and Fleischhauer, and despite a good run, midway through the run timing and scoring showed Friedrich behind Lochner. But a clean chicane and a few clean exits late were just enough to give Friedrich the victory by just .03 over Lochner, with the remainder of the field .8 and more behind Lochner.
The win was the ninth two-man world championship in the storied career for Friedrich. With the racing so tight, Friedrich had to make every inch of the Lake Placid track count.
“Going into the final run I knew I had to drive a 55.00 to win,” he told AP’s Tim Reynolds after the race. “And I drove a 54.97 and it was just enough. I had leave everything in the track, I had a small issue in Curves 12 and 13, but it was enough!”
Lochner’s silver was his fifth in two-man world championship compeititon to go with his gold in St. Moritz in 2023 and a pair of bronzes. He’s always slid well in Lake Placid and was up to the challenge this weekend.
“This is one of the most tough tracks I’ve been on, and the track is very challenging. But it’s why I do the sport, I love the challenge. When we’re on the limit it’s the most fun.”
Behind the two legends of the sport, Germany’s Ammour wit brakeman Benedikt Hertel helped give Germany a sweep of the podium with a third place finish. After the third run, Del Duca had closed the gap to just .25, but Ammour out-slid the American in the final heat to secure the sweep.
“We had to defend third place all day,” Ammour said. “The American sled was right behind us and he had a great time in the fourth run. There was a bit of pressure on us, at the end it worked all out.”
Del Duca was the top non-German in the field. On his home track, Del Duca had the fourth quickest run of each heat alongside four top-five starts with Charlie Volker.
Afterward, he reflected on what it meant to race in front of friends and family.
“This is special,” Del Duca said. “A lot of times our family are getting up in the middle of the night or super early to watch us race, and they stand behind us every step of the way. Now they get to just drive to Lake Placid and watch and support us. I got to hug my family in the braking stretch and it’s special.”
Del Duca’s four run time was just over a second out of gold, but well over a second ahead of anyone else. In fifth place was Switzerland’s Michael Vogt and Andreas Haas, who couldn’t quite match their first day’s speed. They finished the day two tenths ahead of Great Britain’s Brad Hall and Taylor Lawrence, who finished the day in sixth.
Kris Horn crashed in the first heat and found himself in 28th place. His second run got him near the top 20 in 22nd going into Sunday’s sliding. Horn kept his foot on the gas on Sunday, where he and Hunter Powell had two top four starts, and Horn a fifth and third-quickest slide on the way to ninth place.
Geoffrey Gadbois and Bryce Cheek had three great runs going into the fourth heat. They struggled off the start and fell to 12th over four runs.
Canada placed two sleds in the top 20. Taylor Austin and Mike Evelyn slid to 15th place, one spot ahead of Pat Norton and Shaq Murray-Lawrence in 16th. Cyrus Gray, in his first World Championships as a pilot, slid to 26th alongside Kenny-Kuketa M’Pindou.
Australia’s Rhys Petera and Benjamin Forst were 27th, just ahead of Cam Scott and Patrick Castelli in 28th.
Results:
| Pos | Name | Nation | Bib | Run 1 | Run 2 | Run 3 | Run 4 | Total |
| 1 | Friedrich / Schüller | GER | 1 | 54.64 | 55.11 | 54.60 | 54.97 | 3:39.32 |
| 2 | Lochner / Fleischhauer | GER | 2 | 54.74 | 55.15 | 54.52 | 54.94 | 3:39.35 |
| 3 | Ammour / Hertel | GER | 4 | 54.80 | 55.28 | 54.79 | 55.28 | 3:40.15 |
| 4 | Del Duca / Volker | USA | 10 | 54.90 | 55.35 | 54.87 | 55.26 | 3:40.38 |
| 5 | Vogt / Haas | SUI | 13 | 55.36 | 55.54 | 55.32 | 55.55 | 3:41.77 |
| 6 | Hall / Lawrence | GBR | 3 | 55.52 | 55.88 | 55.15 | 55.42 | 3:41.97 |
| 7 | Kim / Kim | KOR | 8 | 55.38 | 55.92 | 55.35 | 55.53 | 3:42.18 |
| 8 | Tentea / Iordache | ROU | 14 | 55.51 | 55.97 | 55.49 | 55.58 | 3:42.55 |
| 9 | Horn / Williamson | USA | 26 | 57.23 | 55.40 | 55.00 | 55.09 | 3:42.72 |
| 10 | Follador / Juillard | SUI | 7 | 55.46 | 56.11 | 55.58 | 55.67 | 3:42.82 |
| 11 | Kalenda / Miknis | LAT | 9 | 55.64 | 56.05 | 55.50 | 55.85 | 3:43.04 |
| 12 | Gadbois / Cheek | USA | 33 | 55.57 | 55.87 | 55.49 | 56.24 | 3:43.17 |
| 13 | Baumgartner / Mircea | ITA | 5 | 55.67 | 56.16 | 55.74 | 55.69 | 3:43.26 |
| 14 | Vain / Riou | MON | 12 | 55.93 | 56.15 | 55.69 | 55.78 | 3:43.55 |
| 15 | Austin / Evelyn | CAN | 18 | 55.63 | 56.09 | 55.77 | 56.14 | 3:43.63 |
| 16 | Norton / Murray-Lawrence | CAN | 19 | 55.84 | 56.08 | 55.87 | 56.16 | 3:43.95 |
| 17 | Rohner / Jones | SUI | 6 | 55.69 | 56.08 | 56.37 | 55.97 | 3:44.11 |
| 18 | Sun / Zhen | CHN | 15 | 55.84 | 56.15 | 55.94 | 56.36 | 3:44.29 |
| 19 | Li / Ye | CHN | 11 | 56.03 | 56.34 | 56.04 | 56.24 | 3:44.65 |
| 20 | Bindilatti / Martins | BRA | 28 | 56.21 | 56.37 | 56.05 | 56.30 | 3:44.93 |
| 21 | Pitter / Bucknor | JAM | 31 | 56.24 | 56.38 | 56.09 | 2:48.71 | |
| 22 | Verginer / Ragazzi | ITA | 21 | 56.23 | 56.35 | 56.35 | 2:48.93 | |
| 23 | Behounek / Dobes | CZE | 20 | 56.16 | 56.58 | 56.01 | 2:48.75 | |
| 24 | Ferreira / da Silva | BRA | 27 | 56.65 | 56.84 | 56.39 | 2:49.88 | |
| 25 | Edelman / Kirejevs | ISR | 22 | 56.43 | 56.94 | 56.70 | 2:50.07 | |
| 26 | Gray / M’Pindou | CAN | 24 | 56.49 | 56.86 | 56.79 | 2:50.14 | |
| 27 | Peters / Forst | AUS | 32 | 57.00 | 57.34 | 57.12 | 2:50.48 | |
| 28 | Scott / Castelli | AUS | 25 | 57.29 | 57.44 | 57.17 | 2:51.90 | |
| 29 | Mandlbauer / Bertschler | AUT | 17 | 55.95 | 60.54 | 56.27 | 2:52.76 | |
| 30 | Palakai / Donpritee | THA | 30 | 58.54 | 58.56 | 59.04 | 2:56.14 | |
| DNS | Baird / Butterworth | GBR | 16 | 60.57 | DNS | |||
| DNS | Suk / Jung | KOR | 29 | DNS | ||||
| DSQ | Prochazka / Rapp | CZE | 23 | 57.09 | 57.65 | DSQ |