Uhlaender's tale of two sports

The world’s most elite athletes spend their entire lives training to be the best they can be at their one sport.  

Competition is fierce to make it to the Olympic Games and those who make it, even just once, are grateful for the opportunity to represent their nation.

Katie Uhlaender (pronounced Yoo-lander) has already made it to the Olympic Winter Games twice as a skeleton athlete, and is now looking to do what some athletes consider the unthinkable.

She is making a serious attempt at qualifying for the London 2012 Olympic Games…in weightlifting.

In April, a visit to Nike’s campus in Portland, Ore., convinced Uhlaender to try her hand at Olympic weightlifting.

So far, transitioning her focus from skeleton to weightlifting has been a cinch.

“Coincidentally enough, my training weights are good enough to qualify for nationals,” Uhlaender said.  “Once I actually start honing in and training specifically for weightlifting, I’d be anxious to see how it goes.”

Earlier this month, Uhlaender took her first step into the world of weightlifting when she competed at the Rocky Mountain State Games.  Similar in style to the Olympic Games, the RMSG consist of 35 different sports and athletes from all over Colorado. 

She took first place in the 63kg weight class for women over 21, and lifted more than any of the women in the other categories.  Uhlaender was named Rocky Mountain State Games Athlete of the Year.

“The world of weightlifting welcomed me with arms open,” Uhlaender said.  “It was awesome to get the support I had.  It was a little meet and everyone’s like, ‘Oh, relax,’ but to me it was still my first stepping stone into that world and everyone that helped me get there.”

Uhlaender has already found a way to challenge herself for her next competition, the 2010 Atlas Open on Sept. 12.

“I’m gonna try to go down to the 58kg class, just to make sure I can do it and throw up a little better total,” Uhlaender said.

That’s an 11-pound difference from the 63kg class.

“That is the most challenging part of this sport – nutrition, diet and balancing out your intake with output,” Uhlaender said.  “I’ve learned so much about my body and nutrition.  It really makes you appreciate the human body.”

View photos of Uhlaender's skeleton and weightlifting careers.

While most athletes focus on one sport year-round, Uhlaender will prove she can juggle two at once after the Atlas Open this fall, when she resorts back to skeleton and prepares for the World Cup season. 

“I need something that makes me feel as though I’m pushing the limits and I’m chasing that moment in life that every athlete wants,” Uhlaender said.  “Taking six months off from the sport, I need something to fill that gap while I’m waiting to get back on the ice and I think weightlifting is gonna be a great solution and it’ll keep me out of trouble.”

The skeleton community could not agree more that Uhlaender needs to be kept out of trouble.

“Katie needs an outlet like this, and compared to some of her more extreme hobbies, this one is pretty safe,” said Darrin Steele, CEO of the U.S. Bobsled and Skeleton Federation.

USBSF has a history of women who have successfully crossed over into weightlifting, including bobsledders Ingrid Marcum and Jamia Jackson.  Steele said he supports Uhlaender’s transition into weightlifting and knows she will return to skeleton.  

“We look forward to having her back on the skeleton team in the fall where she will shift 100 percent of her focus back to her winter sport,” Steele said.

But why continue with skeleton when she could focus solely on weightlifting?

“You go through this moment where you’re not sure you want to go any faster and then you embrace it and then you want more of it, so it’s definitely addictive and definitely why I’m still here,” she said of skeleton.

Uhlaender, a Breckenridge, Colo., native, had never even heard of skeleton before 2003 when a bobsledder friend suggested she try it.

“I was kind of thrown off, like, ‘What is skeleton?’ then I saw it and it looked challenging,” Uhlaender said.  “Eight weeks later, I was national champion.”

In skeleton, competitors slide down the same frozen track that is used for bobsled.  Only skeleton athletes slide head-first on their stomach, on a sled that is approximately four inches from the track.

“It’s sort of like those dreams you have when you’re flying and you’re free, and you’re going as fast and as far as you want,” Uhlaender said.  “It’s the same with skeleton, except just a little bit more closed in and you have consequences.”

The risk-taker had no qualms about dealing with the consequences, and proved how serious she was about skeleton when she won three more National Championships in 2004, 2006 and 2007.  She came in sixth place at the Torino 2006 Olympic Winter Games, where she was the only American female skeleton slider.

She finally achieved international success at the 2007 FIBT World Championships, where she took bronze.  After winning five of eight races on the World Cup circuit that season, Uhlaender was crowned the World Cup champion.  She was only the second American to win that title.  Noelle Pikus-Pace was the first.

Improving upon her 2006-2007 performance, she earned silver at the 2008 FIBT World Championships.  That season, she became the first American – male or female – two-time World Cup champion.

She seemed unstoppable.

But in early 2008, her father, Ted, was diagnosed with multiple myeloma, a cancer of the plasma cells in bone marrow.  Ted Uhlaender had played Major League Baseball as an outfielder for the Minnesota Twins, Cleveland Indians and Cincinnati Reds.

A distracted Uhlaender, who was forced to juggle World Cup races all over Europe with hospital visits for her dad, finished third overall in the 2008-2009 World Cup season.

On Feb. 12, she finished the circuit with a silver medal in Park City, Utah.  After the race, her mom informed her that her dad had died earlier that day.

Two weeks later, she managed to pull off a seventh place finish at the 2009 FIBT World Championships.

Though she was still distracted and grieving, Uhlaender had a renewed purpose.  When her father was striving to win against cancer, he had told her to win against the world.

Unfortunately, that would not be easy.  While riding a snowmobile in April 2009, Uhlaender shattered her kneecap into nine pieces.

A few months later, Uhlaender shattered her kneecap again.  This time into four pieces. 

Her fourth surgery was on Aug. 27, 2009.  Unable to run fast enough for a decent start time without risking further damage to her knee, Uhlaender’s performance suffered, but she was still able to compete on the World Cup circuit and managed a seventh-place finish overall.

She surpassed doctors’ expectations and made it to the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Winter Games, along with Pikus-Pace.  Pikus-Pace finished just outside the podium in fourth-place, but Uhlaender left her second Games with a disappointing 11^th-place finish.

“If things had gone the way they had been going [in the past three years], some hardware should’ve been mine to have,” Uhlaender said.  “But considering I broke my kneecap twice and my father passed away within a year, I feel like what I accomplished was pretty amazing.”

And how is that knee doing now, still less than a year after her last surgery?

“What do you think?  I’d say it’s doing pretty good so far.”

That’s a pretty safe thing to say, considering what her body has proved itself capable of doing, in both her winter and summer sports.

Uhlaender’s juggling act will really be put to the test in December, when she hopes to compete at the 2010 American Open Weightlifting Championships, which will coincide with the FIBT World Cup circuit.

If she can pull it all off and find success in both sports, Uhlaender can become only the 10th American athlete in history to qualify for both the winter and summer Games, if she makes the 2012 Olympic weightlifting team.

It is a list that includes Eddie Eagan, the only Olympian to win gold in both seasons (boxing, 1928; bobsled, 1932), and most recently, gold-medalist speedskater Chris Witty, who placed fifth in cycling time trials at the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games.

After London, Uhlaender will continue to slide for the hardware she believes she is capable of winning at the Sochi 2014 Olympic Winter Games, which could potentially be her fourth Olympic Games.

And what are her plans for after 2014?

“Training for [Rio de Janeiro] 2016,” Uhlaender said. “Why not? I’m definitely gonna do two more Winter Olympics so I might as well find some other way to spend my time.”

 

Tags: Katie Uhlaender, London 2012 Olympic Games, Rio de Janeiro 2016 Olympic Games, skeleton, Sochi 2014 Olympic Winter Games, Torino 2006 Olympic Winter Games, Vancouver 2010 Olympic Winter Games, Weightlifting