Dārta Zunte

Dārta Zunte
Full name	Dārta Estere Zunte
nation	Latvia
birthday	November 21, 2000
place of birth	Riga ,  Latvia
size	168 cm
Weight	58 kg
job	Student
Career
discipline	skeleton
Trainer	Gints Dzerve
status	active
Medal table
JEM medals 0 × 0 × 1 ×
European Junior Skeleton Championship bronze 2019 Sigulda singles
Placements in the WC / EC / NAC / IC
Skeleton ranking 52nd ( 2019/20 ) Debut in the European Cup November 4, 2016 in Sigulda Debut in the Interconti-Cup January 5, 2018 in St. Moritz
last change: March 21, 2020

Dārta Estere Zunte (born November 21, 2000 in Riga ) is a Latvian skeleton pilot. She took part in the 2016 Winter Youth Olympic Games in skeleton for Latvia .

Career

From athletics , Dārta Zunte switched to skeleton in 2014 and in the 2015/16 season she took part in the OMEGA Youth Series, through which skeleton drivers were able to qualify for the Youth Olympic Games . At the two competitions in Innsbruck on December 4th and 5th, 2015, she took fourth and fifth place respectively. On December 16 and 17, she also started at the two competitions in Lillehammer and finished eleventh and seventh respectively. With these results, she qualified for the 2016 Winter Youth Olympic Games and took part in the skeleton competition for Latvia on February 19, 2016 . After two runs, she finished fifth in Lillehammer.

In the 2016/17 season , Dārta Zunte made her debut in the European Skeleton Cup and finished eighth on her home track in Sigulda on November 6, 2016. In the other four Europa Cup races in which she participated, she did not make it into the top ten. At the end of the season she finished 18th in the overall ranking of the European Cup with 138 points. At the end of the season, Dārta Zunte took part in a Junior Skeleton World Championship for the first time and took sixth place at the 2017 Skeleton Junior World Championship in Sigulda on January 28, 2018 .

At the beginning of the 2017/18 season , Dārta Zunte was able to occupy a top ten place in the two European Cup competitions in the Norwegian city of Lillehammer on November 11 and 12, 2017, finishing eighth and ninth respectively. She was able to confirm these two top ten places on December 15 and 16 at the two European Cup competitions in La Plagne , when she finished tenth and ninth. On January 5, 2018, she made her debut in St. Moritz in the Intercontinental Cup and was able to take 24th place in the competition at the Olympia Bobrun St. Moritz – Celerina . At the end of the season she finished eighth in the overall ranking of the European Cup with 210 points. At the end of the season, she took part in the 2018 Skeleton Junior World Championship in St. Moritz and finished eleventh after two runs.

After failing to place among the top ten starters in the first European Cup competitions of the 2018/19 season , in which she participated, Dārta Zunte was able to take the podium for the first time on January 26, 2019 on her home track in Sigulda . She took third place behind Janine Becker from Germany and Agathe Bessard from France. At this European Cup competition, the skeleton junior European championship was run in race-in-race and she won the bronze medal behind Julija Kanakina from Russia, which was only rated at the junior European championship, and Agathe Bessard. At the end of the season, she finished eleventh with 169 points in the overall ranking of the European Cup . At the end of the season, she took part in the 2019 Skeleton Junior World Championships in Königssee and finished twelfth after two runs on the Königssee artificial ice rink .

After starting the 2019/20 European Cup season on December 8, 2019 with a ninth place in Winterberg , Dārta Zunte just missed her second podium in the European Cup on December 14, 2019 in Königssee with fourth place. She reached this on January 19, 2020 in Sigulda on her home track. In the Latvian double victory, she finished second behind her teammate Endija Tērauda and ahead of the Russian Alina Tararytschenkowa . On January 24th, 2020, she finished sixth in Altenberg . She confirmed this place a day later in the second competition and in the race-in-race held European Junior Championship, she just missed a medal in fourth. At the end of the season she finished fourth in the overall ranking of the European Cup with 300 points. On February 9, 2020, she finished 18th at the 2020 Skeleton Junior World Championship in Winterberg . In addition, she qualified for the Bobsleigh and Skeleton World Championships for the first time in her career and finished 28th and last place in the ENSO ice track at the 2020 Bobsleigh and Skeleton World Championships .

Web links

Commons : Dārta Zunte  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Dārta Zunte in the database of the International Bobsleigh & Skeleton Federation
• Dārta Zunte in the Latvia Bobsled Federation database

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Skeleton athletes Yulia Kanakina and Evgeniy Rukosuev are junior European champions. IBSF , January 26, 2019, accessed on March 21, 2020 (German).