Double Olympic gold for Matt Weston, who pairs with Tabitha Stoecker to win mixed skeleton title

CORTINA D'AMPEZZO, Italy — Britain's Matt Weston waited a lifetime to capture his first Olympic skeleton gold medal. He only needed to wait two days for his second title, capping the Milan Cortina Games in the finest possible fashion.

Weston and Tabitha Stoecker won the mixed skeleton event on Sunday night, their two-run combined time of 1 minute, 59.36 seconds good enough to get another Olympic gold for Britain — its fifth in skeleton since 2010, by far the most of any nation in that span.

Weston won the men's skeleton gold medal on Friday night. Stoecker was fifth in the women's skeleton Olympic race that ended Saturday night.

Germany didn't win any golds in the three Olympic skeleton races — but it won everything else, grabbing silver and bronze in each of those events. Susanne Kreher and Axel Jungk were second in 1:59.53, while Jacqueline Pfeifer and Christopher Grotheer were third in 1:59.54.

Kreher and Jungk also won individual silvers in Cortina; Pfeifer and Grotheer also won individual bronzes in Cortina. Jungk, Pfeifer and Grotheer are now the first three-time skeleton medalists in Olympic history.

It came down to the final duo, Stoecker and Weston.

Stoecker crossed the line three-tenths of a second behind Kreher's time, meaning Weston — who set track records in all four of his heats in the men's event — had work to do going into his final slide of these Olympics.

Mystique Ro and Austin Florian, the world champions in this event last year for the U.S., were seventh. Kelly Curtis and Dan Barefoot were 10th for the Americans.

The mixed team event was in the Olympic program for the first time. Athletes — one man and one woman on each team — start their run after a series of lights stop flashing, and the reaction time weighs heavily on whether a team has a chance of winning. Starting early leads to time being added as a penalty.

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