Today's win bodes well for the current overall World Cup champion's chances of success at the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics, whose previous World Championships best was a fourth-place finish in 2011.

The Turin 2006 Olympic silver medallist's success will also allow UK Sport to breathe a sigh of relief, with skeleton being the highest funded winter sport after it was awarded £3.5 million ($5.5 million/€4.1 million) for the four-year cycle to the Games in 13 months' time.

"This is the one I've been training for all year," Rudman said after the race.

"I've medalled at every other major skeleton championship over my career but never at the Worlds, so to bring home gold is absolutely fantastic."


The 31-year-old went into the final run with a 0.82sec lead over her rivals and was fastest in all four runs on the track finishing 0.57 ahead of America's Noelle Pikus-Pace, who took silver, and Canadian Sarah Reid, who claimed bronze.

Rudman's teammate Lizzy Yarnold finished in fourth place, 0.13 behind Reid, to match her current world ranking.

Rudman is Britain's second world skeleton champion after her partner Kristan Bromley, who won gold at the men's World Championships in Altenberg in 2008.

The athletes will now move onto Sochi for the international training week and final race of the World Cup season and formal Olympic test event on February 15 and 16.

Contact the writer of this story at [email protected]


Related stories
January 2013: Rudman closes in on historic world skeleton title
January 2013: Rudman heads British team for skeleton World Championships
December 2012: Britain's Rudman sets Winterberg track record in Skeleton World Cup
September 2012: Mike Rowbottom - Please let Shelley Rudman have the luck that Wilf O'Reilly didn't get in a third Olympics
February 2012: Rudman dedicates first Skeleton World Cup title to father