USA Sweeps the Podium in Women’s NAC Opener

From Whistler, CAN

(Nov. 4, 2017) American Kelly Curtis had been close to a gold medal in her short career as a skeleton athlete. In the opener of the 2017/2018 NAC season she snatched gold at the head of an American sweep of the podium in Whistler.

Curtis had the fast push in the first heat, and the second-fastest slide in both heats on her way to a .11 victory over teammate Samantha Culiver.

Culiver came into the second run as the leader, and was only .16 off Curtis’ pace in that second run, but that was enough to move her back to the silver medal, just .01 ahead of Veronica Day, who took bronze.

Day set the fastest run in the second heat to move her way to her bronze medal.

Canadian Grace Dafoe finished fourth, well ahead of Japan’s Asuka Noguchi and Korea’s Jeonghyeok Lee, who finished fifth and sixth, respectively.

Kristen Hurley finished ninth to round out the solid American effort, while Canadian Melissa-Kate Gagnon finished tenth.

Results:

Pos Name Nation Start 1 Start 2 Run 1 Run 2 Total
1 Kelly Curtis USA 5.04 5.14 55.70 55.93 1:51.63
2 Samantha Culliver USA 5.14 5.08 55.65 56.09 1:51.74
3 Veronica Day USA 5.19 5.11 56.23 55.52 1:51.75
4 Grace Dafoe CAN 5.31 5.36 56.06 56.07 1:52.13
5 Asuka Noguchi JPN 5.21 5.18 56.72 56.17 1:52.89
6 Jeonghyeok Lee KOR 5.12 5.09 56.47 56.78 1:53.25
7 Jinghua Qi CHN 5.24 5.20 56.91 57.00 1:53.91
8 Xinwei Wu CHN 5.39 5.38 56.95 57.12 1:54.07
9 Kristen Hurley USA 5.04 5.07 57.48 57.24 1:54.70
10 Melissa-Kate Gagnon CAN 5.33 5.31 57.16 57.88 1:55.04
11 Erika Reidl ITA 5.43 5.49 57.98 57.51 1:55.49
12 Eunji Kim KOR 5.50 5.28 58.70 58.49 1:57.19
13 Yui Wakabayashi JPN 5.24 5.25 59.27 59.62 1:58.89