Roderick Wins First Career Gold

From Lake Placid, USA

(Nov. 30, 2018) – American Sara Roderick won a hotly contested women’s skeleton race to score her first career IBSF gold medal.

The American led teammate Kelly Curtis by .01 going into the second heat of the North American Cup race. On the second run Curtis ran into trouble out out of Shady II. Her downtime was 4.5 seconds off her first heat pace and she plummeted down the timing sheet to a 10th-fastest run of the heat.

That took the pressure off Roderick, who cruised to a 1.7 second victory to win her first gold medal, ahead of teammate Michelle Toukan who finished with a career-best silver medal.

Sweden’s Leslie Stratton won her third straight NAC medal with a bronze medal run, ahead of USA’s Mystique Ro, Nigeria’s Simidele Adeagbo, and Curtis, who rounded out the top six.

The fourth place for Ro and fifth place for Adeagbo were both career-best runs.

Canadians Janelle Khan-Nielsen and Grace Dafoe finished seventh and tenth, respectively.

With her bronze medal, Stratton put some space between herself and Curtis for the North American Cup season title. The season has three races to go, with one more race in Lake Placid before moving to Calgary to finish out the season.

Results:

Pos Name Nation Start 1 Start 2 Run 1 Run 2 Total
1 Sara Roderick USA 5.24 5.29 56.62 56.43 1:53.05
2 Michelle Toukan USA 5.46 5.44 57.49 57.26 1:54.75
3 Leslie Stratton SWE 5.58 5.51 57.43 57.45 1:54.88
4 Mystique Ro USA 5.26 5.35 57.48 57.78 1:55.26
5 Simidele Adeagbo NGR 5.29 5.32 58.15 58.05 1:56.20
6 Kelly Curtis USA 5.45 5.54 56.63 61.36 1:57.99
7 Janelle Khan-Nielsen CAN 5.57 5.55 59.04 59.09 1:58.13
8 Nicole Silveira BRA 5.84 5.81 59.30 58.91 1:58.21
9 Audra Segree JAM 5.55 5.54 59.41 59.83 1:59.24
10 Grace Dafoe CAN 5.86 5.97 59.87 59.67 1:59.54