CALGARY, February 23. TASS, The Russian skeleton racer Elena Nikitina became the winner of the World Cup-2018/19. The final stage of the World Cup is taking place in Calgary. As a result of the competitions, the 26-year-old athlete in the overall standings became unbeatable by her closest competition Tina Hermann.

Nikitina scored 1663 as a result, Herman - 1597, and Canadian Mirale Rahneva (1396) made it to third place. The winner of the two last World Cup tournaments Nicholas Jacqueline Leeling, who was before the final stage in Calgary's Nikitina's main rival, was forced to leave Canada and return home for personal reasons.

The women's skeleton world cup has been held from the 1996/97 season. Russian athletes have never fallen into the top three prizewinners in their personal qualifying for the results of the season. Last season, Nikitina stopped short of making it into the Top-3 finishing the season fourth in the overall standings, before that the best result among Russian skeletons was the ninth place that Svetlana Trunova took during the 2009/10 season. Nikitina became the second Russian representative, who won the World Cup in skeleton races; Alexander Tretyakov became the first to achieve it in the 2008/00 season.

Nikitina is also the bronze medal winner of the 2014 Olympic Games in Sochi, the silver and bronze medalist of the World Championships (2016), as well as the double European champion (2013, 2017). In November 2017, the commission of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) under the leadership of Denis Oswald decided to annul Nikitina’s results on OI-2014 and issued a lifelong ban for the athlete from participating in all the Olympics, but later the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) abolished the penalty. Nikitina and a number of other Russian skeleton racers were recommended by the Russian Olympic Committee for competing at OI-2018, but the IOC did not invite these athletes to the Games in Pyongyang.

On Sunday, the winner of the men's World Cup will be known. Currently Tretyakov is leading (1494 points). Second place is South Korean Yun Soon Bean (1455); the third is Russian Nikita Tregubov (1345). In total, five athletes will compete for the first place in the overall ranking. For Tretyakov to win in the general standings it is enough to place no less than fourth.