West banishes his demons on home track

Current Under-23 World champion West was disqualified in Winterberg for being overweight, but on his home track of Lake Placid just six days later it was an entirely different story for the 21-year-old.

He had to qualify through the Nations Cup but did exactly that before posting the fastest opening run of 51.448 seconds to take the lead.

West's second attempt was only the fourth best at 51.640 but his total time was still good enough to see him finish 0.006 ahead of Russian Semen Pavlichenko to claim his second singles career victory.

Completing the podium behind 2015 World and European champion Pavlichenko was Austrian Wolfgang Kindl as he claimed a hat-trick of consecutive podiums at Lake Placid.

Meanwhile, two-time Olympic champion Felix Loch will have to wait even longer for his first World Cup victory on the demanding artificial track at Mount Van Hoevenberg as the defending champion came home in sixth.

However, Loch leads the overall World Cup standings on 210 points, just one point ahead of first-round winner Johannes Ludwig of Germany, while Russian Roman Repilov currently lies third on 186 after finishing fifth in Lake Placid.

© Sportsbeat 2016