IBSF World Championships 2023: Great Britain win joint silver in four-man bobsleigh

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Britain's four-man bobsleigh team, right, celebrate with fellow medallists after finishing second at the World Championships in St Moritz, SwitzerlandImage source, BBSA/Viesturs Lacis
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Britain's four-man team (right) are European champions

Great Britain won a first four-man bobsleigh medal at the World Championships for 84 years with silver in St Moritz.

Pilot Brad Hall, Taylor Lawrence, Greg Cackett and Arran Gulliver finished joint second with Latvia.

Germany's Olympic champion Francesco Friedrich claimed his fifth consecutive title in a time of four minutes 19.61 seconds, 0.69secs ahead.

"It's an incredible achievement," said Hall, 32, who was fifth in the two-man.

"It's been a hell of a long time since a four-man crew has won a World Championship medal. To be the ones who have bucked that trend is pretty special."

Frederick McEvoy led Britain to their previous four-man medal, also a silver, in Cortina, Italy, in 1939.

Hall, whose previous best four-man finish at the World Championships was seventh in 2020, went into the final run trailing Germany by eight hundredths of a second.

But Friedrich, who won four-man and two-man gold at the 2018 and 2022 Winter Olympics, set a track record time of 1:04.73 as Germany took a comfortable gold.

Britain's men last won a World Championship medal in any discipline in 1966, when Tony Nash and Robin Dixon took two-man bronze in Cortina.

Nicola Minichiello and Gillian Cooke claimed gold in the women's event in Lake Placid in 2009.