IBSF Skeleton World Cup Sigulda: Five athletes to watch
Olympic champions Hannah Neise and Christopher Grotheer will look to build on their overall lead at the final World Cup event of the year.
Skeleton
The 2024/25 IBSF Skeleton World Cup makes its fourth stop of the season in Sigulda, Latvia this Friday (13 December), with Beijing 2022 gold medallists Hannah Neise and Christopher Grotheer holding 66 and 80-point leads in the women's and men's competitions, respectively.
Olympics.com profiles the German duo and three other racers that you should watch in the skeleton competitions in Latvia.
Hannah Neise (Germany)
Neise will have fond memories of the track at Sigulda after capturing European silver there in February and picking up a third-place finish in the World Cup race there last season.
The 24-year-old is renowned as a consistent performer, and so its proving true once again as Neise sits top of the leaderboard with three podium finishes from four races thus far.
With that said, the 2024 mixed team world champion is yet to win an event in the 2024/25 World Cup campaign, and given her good performances at this venue she could be primed to break that duck on Friday.
Christopher Grotheer (Germany)
Like Neise, Grotheer has been a paragon of consistency this season; only in his case, the 32-year-old has won every race of the 2024/25 campaign to date.
Grotheer's form has seen him build a healthy 80-point lead over Matt Weston in second, but if history is to be believed, his winning streak could come to an end in Sigulda. The three-time men's world champion has never won a race there, and has only finished on the podium in Latvia once (a third place finish in 2023).
Still, given how Grotheer is sliding right now, Friday presents a perfect chance for the German to bag another victory as he seeks his second overall World Cup crown.
Janine Flock (Austria)
The women's field is a tightly-run affair at the moment, with four different athletes having secured a win thus far (Great Britain's Amelia Coltman and Freya Tarbit, Dan Zhao of the People's Republic of China and Belgium’s Kim Meylemans).
Yet the athlete who currently occupies second place is yet to emerge victorious in any contest; like Neise, Janine Flock holds her position by virtue of her consistency.
Janine Flock of Team Austria.
After placing 2nd and 3rd in her first two races, the 35-year-old stumbled with a 12th-place result in Yanqinq before recovering to take 4th in Altenberg. With 730 points, Flock remains in touching distance of Neise, but will need to better the German (and reach the podium) to make a significant dent in the defecit.
Matt Weston (Great Britain)
Team GB, always a threat in skeleton, has impressed with a total of seven podium finishes shared between their top two sliders in the men's competition: defending World Cup title holder Matt Weston and 2024 European champion Marcus Wyatt (who won that title in Segulda back in February).
With skeleton legend Marins Dukurs part of the Great Britain coaching set-up, Weston has yet to finish outside of the podium places, and won the race at this venue during the 2022/23 campaign.
He could be primed to notch his first gold of this season in Sigulda, though Grotheer is proving to be a hard man to beat this year.
Davis Valdovskis (Latvia)
Seeing as this World Cup stage is taking place in Latvia, we thought it fitting to reserve the final spot for two home athletes.
18 year old Davis Valdovskis finished fourth at the 2024 Winter Youth Olympic Games and is the reigning U20 world champion.
Marta Andzane finished 5th at those same Games, and also took bronze at the U20 world championships in 2023.
The youngsters are yet to race in the senior World Cup tour this season, but both have been registered for the event in Sigulda as the skeleton community will get a chance to watch two up-and-coming prospects.