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Ranked No. 5 in the world behind two Americans and two Germans, Walker may have thought the selection nightmare that cost her a spot in the PyeongChang Olympics four years ago was well behind her.
But once again, Walker, 29, is having a nervous wait to have her selection for the Beijing Olympics confirmed.
Fellow Australian bobsledder and the world’s fittest woman, Tia-Clair Toomey, claimed on Instagram earlier this week to have made the Olympics with her pilot Ashleigh Werner, even though there is only one current two-man bob team allocated to Australia.
The athlete competing in the mono bob must come from one of the two members of the two-man team.
A reading of the rules shows that Sliding Sports Australia bases its selection on ranking lists on combined results across the mono bob and two-man bob events, of which Walker is way ahead. But Toomey’s efforts as the brakeman with Werner have helped Australia secure the Olympic two-man bob spot and they accumulated 730 points over the seven races compared to Walker’s two-man team tally of 712 points.
Walker, who hails from the Yarra Valley in Victoria but who has been based in Germany for the past two years, had expected a selection drama, but not the...