The Latvian bobsleigh doubles team – Ventspils Olympic team athlete Jēkabs Kalenda and pusher Matīss Miknis – won eighth place in the 2026 Milan-Cortina Winter Olympic Games competition in Cortina d’Ampezzo on Tuesday.
In the first race, the Latvian crew showed the ninth result, but in the second race they achieved the fourth best time, which allowed them to move up by three positions. On Tuesday, in the third race, the Latvians ranked in tenth place and retreated to a shared seventh position, while the seventh result in the final race allowed the competition to finish in eighth place in the competition of 26 crews.
German driver Johannes Lochner was fastest in all four races and pushed by Georg Fleischhauer’s crew, giving Germany a full podium finish. Francesco Friedrich with Alexander Schueller finished second, losing 1.34 seconds, while Adam Ammour with Alexander Schaller finished third, 1.82 seconds behind the winners.
Olympic debutants Kalenda/Miknis were 2.98 seconds behind the champions. Only one hundredth of a second separated the Latvian crew from the seventh place, but eight hundredths were missing from the top six.
The Milan-Cortina Olympic Games will take place until February 22. Saturday at At 11:00 a.m., the four-man competition will begin on the Cortina track, where Latvia will be represented by the Kalenda quartet.
We congratulate Jēkabs Kalenda on his success!
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