Brisbane’s Jaclyn Narracott has taken home Australia’s first ever medal in the women’s skeleton.
While the 31-year-old missed out on the gold, her silver medal was also historic for the Aussies as it marked our fourth medal at the Beijing Games.
So far the medal tally is one gold, two silver and one bronze, giving Australia four medals in total — making it our most successful Winter Olympics.
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In 2010, 2014 and 2018, the Australian team returned home with three medals, now going one better in 2022.
“Jackie you absolute legend!” the Australian Olympic Team’s official Twitter account cheered.
“First ever sliding Olympic medal and the first time we have ever won 4 medals at a Winter Olympics!
“Jackie Narracott you have just made Aussie sporting history”
Narracott, who skipped a number of big races last year to avoid getting COVID-19 has spent a lot of time training in her driveway in the UK in the past 12 months, according to BBC commentators.
The Aussie is married to and coached by Dom Parsons, who won the bronze medal for Team GB in PyeongChang 2018 and therefore the Aussie spends the season travelling and training with the British team.
Sliding at 118 km/hr to make the run in a time of 62.11 seconds still wasn’t enough to secure the win, with Narracott coming in at +0.62 from leader Germany’s Hannah Neise, who took home the gold.
On the day, Narracott was great but Neise was just better with a four-run time was 4 minutes, 7.62 seconds.
Narracott — the midpoint leader of the event — won the silver in 4:08.24 and World Cup overall champion Kimberley Bos of the Netherlands took the bronze in 4:08.46.
Bos became the first Dutch athlete to win bronze in the women’s skeleton, after five-time world champion Tina Hermann from Germany just missed out on a podium finish.
While first-run leader Mirela Rahneva of Canada finished fifth.
Neise’s win capped a year that was unpredictable in women’s skeleton from the outset. There were eight World Cup races leading up to the Olympics, with five different winners and 11 different medallists — Neise not being one of them.
This was the first time in six Olympic women’s skeleton competitions that a woman from Britain didn’t find her way to the podium. Alex Coomber won bronze in 2002, Shelley Rudman won silver in 2006, Amy Williams took gold in 2010, Lizzy Yarnold won gold in both 2014 and 2018 and Laura Deas captured bronze four years ago as well.
Deas was the top British slider in this race, placing 20th.
