By Andrew Wiese
CBC Sports Online
Michelle
Kelly finally settles on skeletons
From gymnastics, to diving,
to bobsleigh, to skeleton, to wrestling, Michelle
Kelly is always up for a new challenge
Michelle Kelly's Olympic journey
began with a dare. The Grand Prairie, Alta. native
is one of the two women who will carry Canada's medal
hopes in skeleton, a recently revived sliding sport
that looks like a scarier sibling of luge, complete
with running head-first start.
It was 1995, and Kelly was in St. Moritz,
Switzerland competing for Canada as a bobsleigh brakeman.
One night, the Canadian team went out to dinner with
some Swiss team members.
"I was talking to a couple of the
Swiss guys, and they told me they came from skeleton.
I thought they were just crazy," Kelly recalls.
"Basically, they didn't think I would actually
try it. I said I would, and they were, 'Ha, ha, yeah,
sure you will.'"
Skeleton school on a dare
Never one to back down from a challenge, Kelly immediately
phoned back to Calgary and tried to enroll in the
next available skeleton class, but missed the deadline,
forcing her to wait the whole summer before she would
get a chance to prove her Swiss friends wrong.
"(The wait) was actually good because
I actually got excited about it, and as soon as fall
came around I got into school, and after the first
run I was pretty hooked," she says. "The
next season I was back in Europe, and I called them
up and said, 'Hey, I'm here for a skeleton race.'
They thought I was joking."
That Kelly was eager to try something
new should be no surprise. After all, this is a woman
who spent 13 years competing as a gymnast, while competing
in track on the side. When injuries began to catch
up with her, she switched to diving at the age of
17, then later to soccer and then to bobsleigh, before
finally deciding on skeleton.
After the Olympics there's a potential
career with the World Wrestling Federation waiting
for her. Last year Kelly had a tryout with wrestling's
fabled Hart family of Calgary.
"At first I really didn't want
to do it. An ex-teammate of mine from bobsleigh was
asked to go out, and she was asked if she knew any
more athletic girls that would be interested because
they wanted to get more women involved," says
Kelly.
"For me it's fun -- because I just
flip I don't even wrestle that much. It's something
to look into. I'm a performer, no question."
Good in two sports or excellent in one
Kelly made an immediate impact as soon as she decided
to focus on skeleton.
Photo: Canadian Press
Although for the time being Kelly is entirely focused
on skeleton, she initially had a tough time deciding
which Olympic berth she wanted to pursue: skeleton
or bobsleigh. After finishing skeleton school, Kelly
competed internationally in skeleton for the first
time the next year, usually on off-days between bobsleigh
events.
"I didn't want to sacrifice one
for the other, and I felt loyalty to my driver who
stuck with me and had been good about letting me do
both sports, and so I was kind of torn that way,"
says Kelly. "It finally took a bobsleigh teammate,
who asked me, 'Do you want to be good in two sports
or do you want to be excellent in one?'"
In 1999-2000 Kelly turned her sights
strictly on skeleton and promptly had a breakout year,
finishing on the podium three times and winding up
second in the World Cup standings. Hampered by injuries
last season, though, Kelly slipped to fifth in the
world rankings.
She struggled for consistency for much
of this season, finishing seventh twice and sixth
twice, largely because she couldn't put two solid
runs together. She hit her stride at just the right
time, though, winning the final World Cup event of
the season.
And even if those two fast runs in succession
have been hard to come by, Kelly has turned in some
blistering individual runs, so she knows she has it
in her to contend for a medal at Salt Lake. Kelly
also has reason to be confident going into the Olympic
competition, since she holds the track record at the
Utah Olympic Park and is the only woman to record
a sub-50-second run there.
Kelly and super rookie Lindsay Alcock,
who is third in the world rankings, should give Canada
a solid one-two punch in the skeleton. Now that it
appears she made the right choice in opting to become
excellent in the skeleton, Kelly just laughs at her
original misconceptions about the sport -- misconceptions
shared by most casual observers getting their first
glimpse of skeleton this winter.
"Everybody thinks we're crazy,
and I was a victim of that too when I was in bobsleigh,"
says Kelly.
"But after I tried it I completely
changed my mind. It's actually the safest of the three
sliding sports -- I've definitely had more injuries
in bobsleigh than I ever had in skeleton."
reprinted with permission
