Mirela Rahneva continues stunning skeleton season with Igls silver

Canada's Mirela Rahneva won silver at a women's skeleton World Cup event on Friday behind world champion Tina Hermann of Germany.

Leading after the first run, Ottawa's Rahneva dropped one spot into second place in her final run down the 1,478-metre chute, clocking a time of one minute 48.31 seconds.

Hermann, in her first victory of the season, beat Rahneva by 0.16. Janine Flock of Austria finished 0.24 behind in third.

"I keep surprising myself. I always aim high, but I never would have thought I would be able to accomplish this much this year," said Rahneva, who was sliding on the 1976 Olympic track for the first time in her career. "This track is really tricky. You can have really good runs and your time is not competitive at all. The fastest run I had was my first run this week where you are just exploring the track.

"I told myself in my final run of official training to take it back to that run, be intuitive, and not care so much about nailing the perfect entrance into the corners and just let the sled run."

'Crazy good feeling'

It was the fourth medal for the 28-year-old rookie on the skeleton World Cup circuit. Rahneva also has a gold and two bronze in just seven World Cup events this season.

Calgary's Elisabeth Vathje, who has two wins this year, was fifth at 1:48.55. Jane Channell of North Vancouver, B.C., posted her best result of the season to finish sixth with a time of 1:48.65.

"It is a crazy good feeling to know we are all right there and I truly believe we can have a clean sweep of the podium on the right day," said Rahneva. "As much as it is an individual sport, we are a team."

Latvia's Martins Dukurs set a track record in both runs to win the men's event. After opening the heat in 52.01 seconds, Dukurs went even 0.13 faster in his second run.

The four-time world champion led Olympic champion Alexander Tretiakov of Russia by 0.58, and Yun Sung-bin of Korea by 0.68. The rest of the field trailed Dukurs by more than a second.

Calgary's Barrett Martineau was the lone Canadian to qualify for the second run of the men's race. He finished 17th at 1:46.39. Edmonton's Kevin Boyer finished 22nd, while Dave Greszczyszyn, also of Calgary, placed 25th. Only the top-20 qualify for the second run.