There will be separate races on Saturday (December 15) and Sunday (December 16) at the second stop of the International Bobsleigh and Skeleton Federation's flagship circuit, the first of which, at Sigulda in Latvia last weekend, featured just the two-man event.

Elsewhere, Elana Myers Taylor, multiple world champion and silver medallist in the two-woman bobsleigh at the 2014 and 2018 Winter Olympics, is planning to start as a pilot in the four-man event for the United States.

Germany's Freidrich has already made a successful start to the World Cup programme, having won both two-man events at Sigulda.

Winterberg will mark the season's debut for an athlete who won a four-man World Championship gold in Königssee last year as part of Friedrich's team.

Johannes Lochner started his season in the European Cup as he had still not returned to fitness following a hip injury.

He registered one victory and one second place in the two-man in Altenberg.

The Belgian bobsleigh pilot Elfje Willemsen is set to make her last World Cup start in Winterberg, bringing her 11-year career to a close.

The 33-year-old announced her retirement on social media.

Willemsen has been a bobsleigh racer since 2007 when she emerged as the winner of a trial organised by the Belgian Federation.

The former javelin thrower took part in the Winter Olympics in 2010, 2014 and 2018, finishing sixth in Sochi in 2014.

She also won European silver in 2016.

Action at the World Cup will begin tomorrow with men's and women's skeleton.

Russians Nikita Tregubov and Elena Nikitina won the respective men's and women's openers in Sigulda.