Francesco Friedrich of Germany wins 16th world bobsled championship, taking 4-man in Lake Placid

LAKE PLACID, N.Y. (AP) — Francesco Friedrich won every championship he could in bobsledding this season.

The German great is now a world champion for the 16th time, capping off his seventh four-man world title on Saturday at Mount Van Hoevenberg on the final day of the international bobsled season.

This is the sixth time — all in the last seven seasons — that Friedrich has swept the World Cup season titles in both two- and four-man, plus swept those races at either the Olympics or the world championships that season.

Friedrich finished three runs — one of the scheduled four heats was canceled on Friday because of worsening track conditions as the air temperature rose — over two days in 2 minutes, 44.52 seconds.

Johannes Lochner of Germany was second in 2:44.80 and Brad Hall of Britain was third in 2:45.00. The top American sled was driven by Frank Del Duca, who finished fourth in 2:45.64, while Kris Horn of the U.S. drove to a seventh-place finish.

“The biggest thing was just having friends and family here,” Del Duca said after wrapping up worlds on his home track in Lake Placid. “Coming up the outrun and high-fiving them and hearing them cheer was really special. It was a great time.”

Friedrich capped another year when he was the best bobsledder in the world, winning medals in all 17 of his major international races (15 World Cups, plus the two-man and four-man events in Lake Placid). He won 10 golds, also best in the world this year, with six silvers and one bronze.

Lochner finished his year with 16 medals — six gold, seven silver and three bronze.

Laura Nolte is the world champion in two-woman bobsledding for the first time, and she led Germany’s second consecutive sweep of the world championship medals in that event.

Nolte — a two-time world monobob champion, plus an Olympic gold medalist — and Deborah Levi finished four runs over two days in 3:46.00. Kim Kalicki and Leonie Fiebig were second in 3:46.52 and Lisa Buckwitz and Kira Lipperheide were third in 3:47.46.

The U.S. took the next three spots after the Germans. Kaillie Humphries — who had a huge fourth run — teamed with Emily Renna to finish fourth, just 0.06 seconds out of the medals. World monobob champion Kaysha Love and Jazmine Jones were fifth, followed by Elana Meyers Taylor and Lolo Jones in sixth.

It was Germany’s 11th time sweeping the medals in a world championship or Olympic bobsled race. It also happened last week in the two-man competition.

Germany claimed 73 of the 103 medals awarded in World Cup and world championship bobsledding this season, winning 28 of 34 races around the world. No other nation had more than nine bobsled medals; Britain and the U.S. both finished the season with that many.

Nolte had 14 medals on the season, two more than Buckwitz for the top spot in the world in 2024-25. Kalicki had seven and Love — the top American in the overall medal standings — finished the season with six.

The international sliding season is over, though some nations are still planning some internal events while weather allows. The first major news of the sliding offseason could be the announcement on whether Cortina d'Ampezzo, Italy, will play host to the Olympic sliding events or if they will take place in Lake Placid next February.

Cortina is scheduled to hold a homologation, or track testing, event later this month. It is unclear if that will happen as planned.

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The German teams that won the top three spots in the 2-woman bobsled competition celebrate during the bobsled world championships, Saturday, March 15, 2025, in Lake Placid, N.Y. From left to right, are: second-place winners Kim Kalicki and Leonie Fiebig, first-place winners Deborah Levi and Laura Nolte, and third-place winners Lisa Buckwitz and Kira Lipperheide. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)

Germany's Deborah Levi, center left, and Laura Nolte celebrate after winning the the 2-woman bobsled competition during the bobsled world championships, Saturday, March 15, 2025, in Lake Placid, N.Y. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)

Germany's Deborah Levi, center left, and Laura Nolte celebrate after winning the the 2-woman bobsled competition during the bobsled world championships, Saturday, March 15, 2025, in Lake Placid, N.Y. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)

Germany's Deborah Levi, second from right, and Laura Nolte , right, celebrate with fans after winning the the 2-woman bobsled competition during the bobsled world championships, Saturday, March 15, 2025, in Lake Placid, N.Y. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)

Germany's Lisa Buckwitz and Kira Lipperheide make a run in the third heat of the 2-woman bobsled race during the bobsled world championships, Saturday, March 15, 2025, in Lake Placid, N.Y. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)

Germany's Kim Kalicki and Leonie Fiebig make a run in the third heat of the 2-woman bobsled race during the bobsled world championships, Saturday, March 15, 2025, in Lake Placid, N.Y. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)

Germany's Laura Nolte and Deborah Levi make a run in the third heat of the 2-woman bobsled race during the bobsled world championships, Saturday, March 15, 2025, in Lake Placid, N.Y. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)

Britain's Adele Nicoll and Ashleigh Nelson make a run in the third heat of the 2-woman bobsled race during the bobsled world championships, Saturday, March 15, 2025, in Lake Placid, N.Y. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)

Canada's Bianca Ribi and Niamh Haughey make a run in the third heat of the 2-woman bobsled race during the bobsled world championships, Saturday, March 15, 2025, in Lake Placid, N.Y. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)

Elana Meyers Taylor and Lolo Jones, of the United States, make a run in the third heat of the 2-woman bobsled race during the bobsled world championships, Saturday, March 15, 2025, in Lake Placid, N.Y. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)

Canada's Cynthia Appiah and Skylar Sieben make a run in the third heat of the 2-woman bobsled race during the bobsled world championships, Saturday, March 15, 2025, in Lake Placid, N.Y. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)

Kaillie Armbruster Humphries and Emily Renna, of the United States, make a run in the third heat of the 2-woman bobsled race during the bobsled world championships, Saturday, March 15, 2025, in Lake Placid, N.Y. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)

Kaysha Love and Jasmine Jones, of the United States, make a run in the third heat of the 2-woman bobsled race during the bobsled world championships, Saturday, March 15, 2025, in Lake Placid, N.Y. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)

Germany's Francesco Friedrich, Matthias Sommer, Alexander Schuller and Felix Straub celebrate after finishing their run in the fourth heat of the 4-man bobsled race during the bobsled world championships, Saturday, March 15, 2025, in Lake Placid, N.Y. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)

Germany's Francesco Friedrich, Matthias Sommer, Alexander Schuller and Felix Straub celebrate after finishing their run in the fourth heat of the 4-man bobsled race during the bobsled world championships, Saturday, March 15, 2025, in Lake Placid, N.Y. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)

Germany's Francesco Friedrich, Matthias Sommer, Alexander Schuller and Felix Straub celebrate after finishing their run in the fourth heat of the 4-man bobsled race during the bobsled world championships, Saturday, March 15, 2025, in Lake Placid, N.Y. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)

NEW YORK (AP) — No quick dispatching of disease investigators. No televised news conference to inform the public. No timely health alerts to doctors.

In the midst of a hantavirus outbreak that involves Americans and is making headlines around the world, the U.S. government's top public health agency, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, has been uncharacteristically missing in action, according to a number of experts.

To President Donald Trump, "We seem to have things under very good control," as he told reporters Friday evening.

To experts, the situation aboard a cruise ship has not spiraled because, unlike COVID-19 or measles or the flu, hantavirus does not spread easily. It has been health experts in other countries, not the United States, who have been dealing primarily with the outbreak in the past week.

“The CDC is not even a player," said Lawrence Gostin, an international public health expert at Georgetown University. “I've never seen that before.”

Not until late Friday did CDC actions accelerate.

Health officials confirmed the deployment of a team to Spain's Canary Islands, where the ship was expected to arrive early Sunday local time, to meet the Americans onboard. They said a second team will go to Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska as part of a plan to evacuate American passengers from the ship to a quarantine center. Also, the CDC issued its first health alert to U.S. doctors, advising them of the possibility of imported cases.

The CDC's diminished role in this outbreak is an indicator the agency is no longer the force in international health or the protector of domestic health that it once was, some experts said.

The hantavirus outbreak is “a sentinel event” that speaks to “how well the country is prepared for a disease threat. And right now, I’m very sorry to say that we are not prepared,” said Dr. Jeanne Marrazzo, chief executive officer of the Infectious Diseases Society of America.

Early last month, a 70-year-old Dutch man developed a feverish illness on a cruise ship traveling from Argentina to Antarctica and some islands in the South Atlantic. He died less than a week later. More people became sick, including the man's wife and a German woman, who both died.

Hantavirus was first identified as a cause of sickness of one of the cases on May 2. The World Health Organization swung into action and by Monday was calling it an outbreak. About two dozen Americans were on the ship, including about seven who disembarked last month and 17 who remained on board.

For decades, the CDC partnered with the WHO in such situations. The CDC acted as a mainstay of any international investigation, providing staff and expertise to help unravel any outbreak mystery, develop ways to control it and communicate to the public what they should know and how they should worry.

Such actions were a large reason why the CDC developed a reputation as the world's premier public health agency.

But this time, the WHO has been center stage. It made the risk assessment that has told people the outbreak is not a pandemic threat.

“I don’t think this is a giant threat to the United States,” said Jennifer Nuzzo, director of Brown University’s Pandemic Center. But how this situation has played out “just shows how empty and vapid the CDC is right now,” she said.

The current situation comes after 16 tumultuous months during which the Trump administration withdrew from the WHO, has restricted CDC scientists from talking to international counterparts at times and embarked on a plan to build its own international public health network through one-on-one agreements with individual countries.

The administration has laid off thousands of CDC scientists and public health professionals, including members of the agency's ship sanitation program.

As this was playing out, Trump's health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., said he was working to “restore the CDC’s focus on infectious disease, invest in innovation, and rebuild trust through integrity and transparency.”

The CDC has not been completely silent on hantavirus.

The agency on Wednesday issued a short statement that said the risk to the American public is “extremely low,” and described the U.S. government as “the world’s leader in global health security.”

Said Nuzzo: “Not only was that not helpful, it actually does damage because a core principle of public health communications is humility.”

The CDC's acting director, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, posted a message on social media that the agency was lending its expertise in coordinating with other federal agencies and international authorities. Arizona officials this week said they learned from the CDC that one of the Americans who left the ship — a person with no symptoms and not considered contagious — had already returned to the state. WHO officials said the CDC has been sharing technical information.

The CDC also is “monitoring the health status and preparing medical support for all of the American passengers on the cruise,” Bhattacharya wrote.

But federal health officials have mostly been tight-lipped, declining interview requests.

In interviews this week, some experts made a comparison with a 2020 incident involving the Diamond Princess, a cruise ship docked in Japan that became the setting of one of the first large COVID-19 outbreaks outside of China.

The CDC sent personnel to the port, helped evacuate American passengers, ran quarantines, shared genetic data on the virus, coordinated with the WHO and Japan, held public briefings and rapidly published reports “that became the world’s reference data on cruise ship COVID transmission,” said Dr. Tom Frieden, a former CDC director.

Some aspects of the international response to the Diamond Princess were criticized, and it did not halt the outbreak or stop COVID-19’s spread across the world. But some experts say it was not for the CDC's lack of trying.

“The CDC was right on top of it, very visible, very active in trying to manage and contain it,” Gostin said, while the agency's work now is delayed and subdued.

Instead of working with nearly all of the world's nations through the WHO, the Trump administration has pursued bilateral health agreements with individual nations for information sharing, public health support, and what it describes as “the introduction of innovative American technologies.” Roughly 30 agreements are currently in place.

That's not sufficient, Gostin said. “You can't possibly cover a global health crisis by doing one-on-one deals with countries here and there,” he said.

Associated Press writers Ali Swenson in New York, Darlene Superville in Washington and Susan Montoya Bryan in Albuquerque, New Mexico, contributed to this report.

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

Passengers on the the hantavirus-stricken cruise ship, MV Hondius, watch epidemiologists board the boat in Praia, during their voyage to Spain's port of Tenerife, May 6, 2026. (AP Photo)

Workers set up temporary shelters in the area where passengers from the MV Hondius cruise ship are expected to arrive at the port of Granadilla in Tenerife, Canary Islands, Spain, Saturday, May 9, 2026. (AP Photo/Manu Fernandez)

Crew members of the hantavirus-stricken cruise ship, MV Hondius, wait their turns for a first interview with epidemiologists, during the voyage to Spain's port of Tenerife, May 6, 2026. (AP Photo)

Health workers in protective gear evacuate patients from the MV Hondius cruise ship into an ambulance at a port in Praia, Cape Verde, Wednesday, May 6, 2026. (AP Photo/Misper Apawu)

A Spanish Civil Guard officer inspects the area where passengers from the MV Hondius cruise ship are expected to arrive at the port of Granadilla in Tenerife, Canary Islands, Spain, Saturday, May 9, 2026. (AP Photo/Manu Fernandez)