In November, Kim Meylemans ended up in the hospital with two broken ankles, but after real ordeal and a race against time, she prepared herself as best as she could for the world title fight.
Three weeks ago, she finished ninth at the World Cup in Winterberg, even though she could barely walk, but last week she won the European Cup in Sigulda.
She would have liked to better her best World Cup result – fifth place in 2017 – but with that history and not quite the old one, she can be happy with the eighth place she dreamed of.
Meylemans started each round a little faster, and in the third round she came down with the sixth fastest time, but still couldn’t pull through.
In the fourth round, she looked like she was on her way to improving her position, but in the end she hit the track wall hard, causing her to lose speed. She swore a little, but was still happy with her performance over the weekend.
The battle for gold was very exciting. The Dutch Kimberly Bos, the 2022 European champion in Sankt Moritz, scored two wonderful goals in the third and fourth periods, but the young German Susan Kreher withstood the pressure.
The 2022 World Youth Champion has one-hundredth of a second left over the Dutch. The Games No. 3 was thrilled to bag her first World Cup medal. Bronze went to Canadian Mirela Rahneva.
We also had a Belgian at the start among the men. 20-year-old Colin Freeling dropped to 29th place (out of 36 entrants).
Yesterday he was 30th and 29th respectively, today 27th. Only the top 20 people were allowed to do the fourth round. With a 29th place finish in the standings, that was not the case for the 20-year-old Freeling.
25-year-old Briton Matt Weston was untouchable and won all the rounds. With an overall time of 4’28’71, he took the gold medal, ahead of Italy’s Amedeo Bagnis (4’30’50; +1’79) and South Korean Jung Seungye (4’31’17; +2’46). Defending German champion Christopher Grotheer was only 10th (4’32″85; +4″14).
