Oskars Melbārdis

Oskars Melbārdis
Oskars Melbārdis at the 2014 Olympic Winter Games
nation	Latvia
birthday	February 16, 1988
place of birth	Valmiera , Latvian SSR ,  Soviet Union
size	190 cm
Weight	98 kg
Career
position	pilot
Trainer	Sandis Prusis
National squad	since 2006
status	active
Medal table
Olympic medals 1 × 0 × 2 × World championships 1 × 1 × 2 × European championships 2 × 1 × 2 ×
winter Olympics gold 2014 Sochi four bronze 2014 Sochi two bronze 2018 Pyeongchang two  Bobsleigh and Skeleton World Championships bronze 2009 Lake Placid four silver 2015 Winterberg two bronze 2015 Winterberg four gold 2016 Igls four  European bobsleigh championships gold 2008 Cesana Torinese four gold 2015 La Plagne four silver 2015 La Plagne two bronze 2016 St. Moritz four bronze 2018 Igls four
Placements in the Bobsleigh World Cup
World Cup victories 11  Overall World Cup two 1. ( 2014/15 )  Overall World Cup foursome 1. ( 2014/15 )  Overall World Cup combination 1. ( 2014/15 )
Podium placements 1. 2. 3.  Two-man bobsleigh 2 10 3  Four-man bobsleigh 9 3 5
last change: February 4, 2020

Oskars Melbārdis (born February 16, 1988 in Valmiera , Latvian SSR ) is a Latvian bobsleigh pilot .

Career

He celebrated his first major success in 2008 when he won the European Championship in the four-man bobsleigh. Melbārdis was one of the pushers, the pilot was Jānis Miņins . In the World Cup so far, a second place in the overall classification of the two-man and four-man bobs, both in 2012/13 , was his best final result. So he won the overall World Cup in the combined ranking . In the 2013/14 season he won his first two World Cup races in St. Moritz and Igls .

Oskars Melbārdis started at the 2014 Winter Olympics in both two-man and four-man bobsleigh. In the two-man bobsleigh, he initially finished fifth with Daumant's Dreiškens pusher and second in the four-man bobsleigh. In March 2019 he was finally awarded the Olympic victory in the four-man bobsleigh and bronze in the two-man bobsleigh after the Russian bobsleigh teams were disqualified for doping.

In 2015 he became vice European champion in the two-man bobsleigh in La Plagne with Daumants Dreiškens. With Dreiškens, Arvis Vilkaste and Jānis Strenga , he won the European championship in the four-man bobsleigh. In the 2014/15 World Cup , he won two races in the two-man bobsleigh with Daumants Dreiškens and was second five times. With this achievement he became the first Latvian to win the overall ranking in the two-man World Cup. In the four-man bobsleigh, he won five of the eight World Cup races and also secured victory in the overall standings in this discipline. At the 2015 World Championships in Winterberg, he and Johannes Lochner won silver behind Francesco Friedrich . He secured bronze in the four-man bobsleigh. The following year he became world champion in the four-man bobsleigh in Igls . In 2018 he won the bronze medal in the two-man bobsleigh with Jānis Strenga at the Olympic Games in Pyeongchang . In the four-man bobsleigh he was fifth with Strenga, Vilkaste and Dreiškens. At the end of 2018 he was voted Latvia's Sportsman of the Year .

Web links

• Oskars Melbārdis in the database of the International Bobsleigh & Skeleton Federation
• Oskars Melbārdis in the Sports-Reference database (English; archived from the original )

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Two silver medals posthumously. In: faz.net. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , March 28, 2019, accessed on March 28, 2019 .