Katie Uhlaender doesn’t make US World Cup skeleton team, leaving Olympic hopes uncertain

Katie Uhlaender’s bid to become the first American women’s slider to make six Olympic teams hit a major bump Saturday when she didn’t qualify for the U.S. World Cup team that will start competing later this month.

The team, which was finalized after the completion of selection races on the 2002 Olympic track in Park City, Utah, includes world silver medalist Mystique Ro, Sara Roderick, 2022 Olympian Kelly Curtis and Kendall Wesenberg on the women’s team, along with Austin Florian, Dan Barefoot and Nick Tucker on the men’s team.

Ro and Florian combined to win the mixed team world championship last season.

Not making the World Cup team doesn’t necessarily end Uhlaender’s hopes of competing at the Milan-Cortina Olympics in February. U.S. team officials will re-evaluate the World Cup roster somewhere around the halfway point of the season before determining the Olympic team.

There are other circuits besides the World Cup for athletes to compete, including North American Cup and Europe Cup.

The team will be leaving within the coming days for Europe to resume training, when most sliders will get their first look at the venue where the Olympics will be held in February. The first World Cup races for men’s and women’s skeleton this season are at the rebuilt Olympic track in Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy, on Nov. 21.

Uhlaender was the top American women’s skeleton slider at the 2022 Beijing Games, placing sixth. It was widely believed that would be her final Olympic cycle, though she never announced her retirement and competed in 13 World Cup races over the last two years.

She was sixth at the 2006 Turin Games, 11th at the 2010 Vancouver Games, fourth at the 2014 Sochi Games – despite the Americans still believing she deserved bronze because of a Russian slider’s involvement in that country’s doping scandal – and 13th at the 2018 Pyeongchang Games.

Skeleton is the headfirst sliding discipline where athletes can reach speeds of around 80 mph. Ro had a bye onto the World Cup team after her silver-medal finish at the worlds, and most of the other spots on the team essentially came down to races held Friday and Saturday.