Utah Woman Wins in Skeleton

Noelle Pikus-Pace liked bobsledding, but she’ll never forget her first venture at skeleton, not quite five years ago.

“I kind of got suckered into it,” she said. “My coach showed me this little cookie sheet and put a helmet on my head without telling me what it was. He told me to pick my feet up, and that was it.

“It was halfway down the track, but I was screaming the whole time.”

On Friday, she shrieked for joy, as she became the first U.S. woman to win the World Cup skeleton title.

With three victories, a second-place finish and a third-place finish on the World Cup circuit this season, the 22-year-old native of Orem, Utah, had a comfortable lead over Maya Pederson of Switzerland before Friday’s World Cup finale at Lake Placid, N.Y. Pederson won the race with a combined time of 1 minutes 54.55 seconds for two runs, but Pikus-Pace’s bronze-medal finish in 1:55.22 gave her the championship, 560 points to 545.

“Quite honestly, last year during training runs I was near the top every day. I just couldn’t put it together on race day,” she said by phone from Lake Placid. “This year, it just clicked.

“It was a matter of experience and mental approach, of just getting up to the [start] line and focusing on having fun and relaxing. When I got to the line last year, I think my focus was more, ‘I need to finish in the top 10,’ and what time I wanted, rather than looking at what I had to do. I was looking at the result more than the process, and I’ve changed that.”

Skeleton athletes lie on a sled in a prone position, head first, and steer by dragging their feet or shifting weight. Men’s skeleton returned to the Olympic program in 2002 in Salt Lake City, where Jim Shea Jr. of the U.S. won the gold medal. In the debut of women’s skeleton, Tristan Gale and Lea Ann Parsley of the U.S. finished 1-2.

Parsley was 10th in the World Cup standings, and Katie Uhlaender of Breckenridge, Colo., was sixth. Eric Bernotas of Avondale, Pa., won the men’s finale to rank sixth overall. Jeff Pain of Canada was the overall champion, with Chris Soule of Trumbull, Conn., second. Zach Lund of Salt Lake City ranked fifth.

Pikus-Pace brought her college textbooks on the World Cup circuit so she and her husband of 2 1/2 years, Janson, can graduate together from Utah Valley State College in April. Also on her schedule are the skeleton world championships next weekend in Calgary, Canada, and the Turin Games are merely a year away. But when she’s not on the track, she’s not in a hurry.

“I’m looking forward to it and it’s definitely a goal in my mind, but I don’t want to get ahead of myself,” she said. “I’m just taking things a day at a time and a race at a time, and if it so happens that I’m there, I just want to do my best.”