SWINDON’S Craig Thompson secured a first medal since claiming World Cup silver in 2021 late last week as he took bronze in the Intercontinental Cup in Lillehammer.

The 2022-23 bob-skeleton season began with a major medal haul for British athletes from both the bobsleigh and skeleton teams - many making the podium in their first races for more than eight months.

Brad Hall and Taylor Lawrence were double medal winners, while Arran Gulliver, Rory Willicombe, and Jacob Salisbury joined Thompson in picking up a medal apiece.

In European action, Salisbury and Thompson won a bronze medal each in the first two Intercontinental Cup competitions of the season on Friday and Saturday, respectively.

Salisbury celebrated the third medal of his career, beaten only by World Cup veteran Mattia Gaspari and current back-to-back World Championship bronze medalist Alexander Gassner in a strong field in Lillehammer. Thompson followed suit 24 hours later for his first medal since winning World Cup silver in Innsbruck-Igls in January 2021.

Salisbury was the fastest starter in all four race heats across the two days, while Thompson set the track record in Run One of the second race.

In the women’s races, Amelia Coltman finished sixth on both occasions - the same position that Salisbury and Thompson placed when they weren’t on the podium.

Meanwhile, Hall and Lawrence took silver in the two-man competition on the North American Cup circuit in Whistler on Wednesday, clocking the fastest starts in each heat and only missing out on gold by 0.04 seconds to Switzerland’s Michael Vogt, who finished fourth at the Beijing Olympics.

They then went one better to finish first in the four-man race at the weekend, again registering the fastest starts in both attempts in what was a first-ever competitive bobsleigh run for Gulliver and Willicombe. They claimed gold by 17 hundredths in Hall’s first four-man outing since piloting Lawrence, Nick Gleeson and Greg Cackett to sixth spot in Beijing in February.

Gulliver and Willicombe only joined the GB set up in the summer but started as they mean to go on in the absence of Gleeson - who has switched to the front seat this season - and Cackett - who is out in Canada with the team but wasn’t fit to race.