Intro:

Pilot Oskars Melbardis and his team of Daumants Dreiskens, Arvis Vilkaste and Janis Strenga win the FIBT World Cup four-man bobsleigh event in St Moritz on Sunday (12th January).

Script:

The sixth four-man bobsleigh race of the Viessman FIBT Bob & Skeleton World Cup Tour was held in St Moritz, Switzerland on Sunday.

Oskars Melbardis, pilot of the Latvian team produced an excellent first run of 1 minute, 04.75 seconds, to ensure that the quartet were in first place half way through the competition.

Melbardis, Dreiskens, Vilkaste and Strenga held onto that advantage, notching up the fastest in both runs to take the win in a combined time of two minutes, 09.52, 0.23 seconds faster than their closest rivals.

The victory proved to the first podium place of the season, and only Melbardis' second ever World Cup victory in a four seater.

Current World Cup title holder Alexander Zubkov of Russia and his team took second place in the competition.

While the German team of world champion Maxmilian Arndt completed the podium finishing third, a further 0.22 seconds further back.

And Arndt leads the way in the rankings of the four-man bobsleigh competition.

With six of the eight Viessman FIBT World Cup races completed, the German has 1238 points.

Russia's Zubkov is second with 1132 points, while Chris Spring of Canada - fourth in St Moritz - is third overall with 1096 points.