Friedrich takes slim lead in four-man bobsleigh at Beijing Winter Olympics

YANQING, Beijing, Feb. 19 (Xinhua) -- German Francesco Friedrich built up a slim lead after the first two heats of the four-man bobsleigh, making himself on the way to pocketing the second gold at the Beijing Winter Olympics.

In the first run, Lochner, Florian Bauer, Christopher Weber and Christian Rasp of Germany clocked 58.13 seconds, with Friedrich team and Justin Kripps team trailing by 0.16 seconds and 0.25 seconds respectively.

Friedrich, who won seven out of the eight World Cup races this season, turned the game around after clocking 58.71 seconds in the second run, opening a temporary lead of 0.03 seconds after the two runs.

Locher team ranked second, Justin Kripps, Ryan Sommer, Cam Stones and Benjamin Coakwell of Canada were in third place.

"With the second run, we are so happy. It was an amazing run, we did a great job at the start. In the first run we had too many mistakes but we corrected in the second run," said Friedrich.

In Locher's eyes, a gap of three-hundredths of a second is nothing on this track.

"We count in tenths of seconds, and if you're losing one kilometer per hour, you're losing tenths to 15 hundredths of a second. So there is actually not much of a difference," Locher said.

"For us, the race starts at zero tomorrow," the man who took eighth place at the event four years ago added.

The host nation's Li Chunjian team ranked 16th out of 28 teams, and the other Chinese team with pilot Sun Kaizhi was in 17th place after two heats.

The last two runs of the four-man bobsleigh will take place on Sunday.