Kasjanov claims final four-man victory of the season

Kasjanov and his crew of brakemen Aleksei Pushkarev, Vasilij Kondratenko and Alexey Zaitsev were in blistering form at the venue for next year's Winter Olympics.

And in the final run of the season they set a track record of 49.97 seconds en route to taking gold in a total time of 1:39.96 minutes.

That was 0.23 seconds faster than runner-up Switzerland, piloted by Rico Peter and with a crew consisting of Bror van der Zijde, Alex Baumann and Thomas Amrhein.

And third went to Oskars Kibermanis, Janis Jansons, Matiss Miknis and Raivis Zirups of Latvia who were 0.26 behind the Russians, although they did secure the first start record on the Olympic track with an effort of 4.97 seconds.

There was also plenty for Great Britain to celebrate as Bradley Hall, racing with his crew Bruce Tasker, Samuel Blanchet and Gregory Cackett, achieved his best result in the four-man bobsleigh to date, finishing eighth.

His compatriots Lamin Deen, Mark Lewis-Francis, Ben Simons and Andrew Matthews finished 18th.

In the overall standings for the four-man bobsleigh World Cup the second win of the season for Kasjanov saw him finish top on 1500 points, just 29 ahead of Peter while American Steven Holcomb was third on 1362 after finishing tenth in Pyeongchang.

In the combined overall standings – calculated by adding together all results from the two-man and four-man bobsleigh races – World Champion Francesco Friedrich of Germany moved ahead of long-standing leader Kasjanov at the last stop of the season in Pyeongchang.

His win in the two-man bobsleigh and 11th-place finish in the four-man were enough to give him 2769 points, three more than Kasjanov.

Holcomb ended the final season ahead of the Olympics in third place on 2693 points in the combined overall standings.

Sportsbeat 2017