Competing as Great Britain’s No 1 team with Nicola Minichiello, a World Championship silver medallist, the pair thought they had secured a top ten place in the third round of the Cup at Lake Placid, New York.
This result would have put them ninth overall in the international rankings prior to the circuit moving to Europe and re-starting after the Christmas break.
However, the celebrations in the British camp were short lived when the British pair learnt that they had been disqualified for a technical infringement of the rules.
The International Bobsleigh Federation has confirmed that ‘there was an infraction of the material rules of the sled’.
The team are now placed 16th overall.
Prior to the disqualification GB1 were lying in sixth position at the end of the first run but dropped to seventh at the end of the second run on what is one of the most difficult tracks on the international circuit.
Their results were all the more impressive considering that Minichiello, the driver, is still not fully recovered from a leg operation in September placing even more pressure on brakewoman, Th?rin.
Jersey’s Lieutenant-Governor, Lieutenant-General Andrew Ridgway, who is a patron of the Jersey Bobsleigh Club said: ‘Lauren pushed the GB1 sled into seventh and shocked teams including America, Canada, and Germany but the disqualification came because the front of their sled was two millimetres too narrow, probably because they’d bumped the side of the track coming down.
The girls were distraught, we spoke to them, but it has really fired them up and they’re now determined to put a mark down at the World Championships in Altenburg in February.’
It is clear that many involved in the sport believe that the bigger teams would not have been treated this way and a smaller outfit was used to get the officials’ message across.
Th?rin and Minichiello both have their sights set on competing at the Vancouver Winter Olympics in 2010 and have already achieved some good results together since Th?rin started the sport in 2006.
The next round of the World Cup is in Cortina on 11 January.
