And at the highest of levels, it can be the difference between a podium finish and landing in the top five.
That ended up being the exact situation for Moose Jaw’s Ben Coakwell and Team Justin Kripps at the four-man bobsleigh World Championships this past weekend, as their overall time for four runs down the track in Altenberg, Ger. saw them finish 0.42 seconds out of the top three.
Kripps and his team of Cam Stones, Coakwell and Ryan Sommer recorded a time of 3:36.95 to finish 1.93 seconds back of winner Francesco Friedrich of Germany, who capped a perfect abbreviated season with wins in all four World Cup races before sweeping his way to the world title.
Kripps got off to a decent start in the first two runs on Saturday night, sitting in fourth place with a time of 54.33 after his opening trip down the track and holding the same position at the end of the day with a 54.56 second run.
Canada would put together their best time of the weekend in their first run Sunday with a 53.87, but the times for everyone on the day were almost a half-second faster, and Kripps would come in with the fifth-fastest time of the run.
By that time, Kripps had more than a half-second lead over sixth-place Rostislav Gaitiukevich of Russia, and his final run of 54.19 was enough to hold on to fifth overall.
Austria’s Benjamin Maier (3:35.81) and Germany’s Johannes Lochner (3:36.53) rounded out the top three.
Canada’s Christopher Spring finished 10th in 3:38.12.
Kripps went into Worlds as the event’s third-ranked team, coming off a World Cup season where he had three podium finishes, including a third place in Innsbruck in the final race of the Cup campaign.
