Former World Cup skeleton champion Katie Uhlaender will not compete in the U.S. national team trials that begin Wednesday morning in Lake Placid, N.Y.
Uhlaender has received a medical waiver from the U.S. Bobsled and Skeleton Federation, allowing her to skip the trials. Uhlaender is recovering from an injured left kneecap, which broke into more than five pieces in a snowmobile crash earlier this year and has needed multiple operations to repair.
But what that waiver means remains unknown—even to Uhlaender. The top three racers from the team trials will earn spots on the World Cup team and have the inside track on qualifying for the Winter Olympics in Vancouver. The USBSF hasn’t announced any plans to amend its selection procedures.
“I have a medical waiver through trials,” Uhlaender said from Lake Placid on Tuesday night. “Still waiting to find out what team I will be on.”
If nothing else, Uhlaender will get some sliding at the team’s Mt. Van Hoevenberg track Wednesday and Thursday: She’ll be a forerunner, one of the headfirst sliders who checks the track just before the actual start of competition. Uhlaender has been able to train and slide, but starting—running alongside her sled before hopping on to begin the race—remains troublesome because of the knee.
In all, 11 women and 14 men are scheduled to race in the skeleton team trials, which will be contested over four runs, two in Lake Placid and two in Park City.
The USBSF is expected to take four men’s and four women’s sliders to the Olympic track in Whistler later this month for training. Uhlaender is likely to be considered for one of those spots, even without competing in the team trials.
It could prove to be an ominous start to another Olympic year for the skeleton program.
The season of the 2006 Turin Games was especially rocky, with sexual harassment claims against a former coach, men’s medal hopeful Zach Lund having a positive doping test triggered by a hair-restoration product, a training crash shattering the leg of women’s gold favorite Noelle Pikus-Pace, and two men’s sliders seriously hurt in a tobogganing accident during those Olympics.
Whatever the waiver actually says, it’s almost certain that Uhlaender, of Breckenridge, Colo., would need to meet certain results criteria to either obtain or keep a spot on the World Cup team. She was sixth at the Turin Olympics, and won the overall World Cup titles in 2007 and 2008.
