Sports

U.S. Skeleton Team Eager For Fresh Start

LAKE PLACID, N.Y. (AP) ― Noelle Pikus-Pace's master plan called for something much different.

She should be home in Utah now, Olympic gold in her grasp, starting a family with her husband. Instead, she's back on an icy track in the Adirondacks, hardware helping to hold her once-shattered right leg together, sliding headfirst down a mountainside trail at speeds only a handful of women on this planet can reach.

"I needed to be back," said Pikus-Pace, who was badly injured in an October 2005 training session and missed the 2006 Winter Olympics. "After everything that went on last year, all the messiness, I needed to find the fun in this again."

That is a quest she and the other sliders on the United States national skeleton team seem to be share as they embark on a new four-year Olympic cycle -- one where they'll try to shake off the lingering aftereffects of nasty events that plagued the 2005-06 season.

A six-race series of trials for this year's national team begins Wednesday in Lake Placid, with the conclusion set for Nov. 12 in Park City, Utah. From there, a four-man, four-woman national team will be set. That group will be asked to get the American program, considered the world's best only a few years ago, back on track.

"This team is going to be fine," U.S. coach Orvie Garrett said. "I'm very happy with how they're sliding and how they're becoming a team."

After the way things went a year ago, that is not an insignificant statement.

Skeleton racers slide headfirst on a thin sled down the same track used for bobsled and luge, exceeding 70 mph. Last season was anything but fun for the U.S. team, whose medal aspirations careened wildly out of control with doping accusations, the injury to Pikus-Pace and sexual harassment charges against a former coach that fractured the team.

Former coach Tim Nardiello was suspended over the sexual harassment allegations. He later was reinstated after an arbitrator found those claims baseless but then fired after ignoring an order from the U.S. Bobsled and Skeleton Federation to stay away from the U.S. team during final Olympic preparations.

Pikus-Pace was the reigning World Cup champion and prohibitive Olympic favorite. Her hopes ended in a freak October 2005 training accident, when an American-driven bobsled crashed into her. Although she made a valiant recovery attempt, she couldn't regain top form in time for Turin.

There's still lingering problems with insurance for her medical bills. She said the process is "stressful" but quickly added she believes it eventually will be resolved with the help of the USBSF and U.S. Olympic Committee.

"I had always planned in my mind that after 2006, no matter what, I would retire," Pikus-Pace said. "That's what my husband and I always said. But now there's that the motivation to come back and prove to others -- and myself -- that I could be the best in the world again."

Zach Lund, too, is aiming to reclaim what once was his. The world's top-ranked men's slider but was barred from the Olympics after the medication he used to fight baldness triggered a positive doping test. Although the Court of Arbitration for Sport agreed Lund did not cheat to enhance performance, he still was issued a one-year sanction for taking a banned substance.

"The system's broken," said Lund, who is off the hair-restoration pills and still has his hair, which he keeps very short. "It's obvious. And I'm an example of it."

He says he's not fueled by anger, but the U.S. camp expects Lund -- who can't slide until Nov. 9 when his suspension ends -- will be deeply driven this season.

"I know one thing," Garrett said. "If Zach gets on the team, he is going to show everyone that he would have had the gold medal. I have no doubt that if he was in the Olympics, he'd have it."

Last season, teammates took sides against one another, with some saying a few athletes made claims against Nardiello entirely out of anger over their omission from the Olympic team. Frustrated with the direction of the Lake Placid-based federation, the U.S. Olympic Committee eventually appointed a management committee to oversee the USBSF's operations, a process that is still ongoing.

"Our interest has been and will be in seeing the national governing body provide the type of support and resources that its athletes and its sport need and deserve," USOC spokesman Darryl Seibel said. "Good progress is being made in that regard, but more still needs to be done."

After a season like 2005-06, change wasn't just necessary, it was welcomed.

"We're turning over a new leaf," said Courtney Yamada, a favorite to claim one of the spots on this year's women's team. "It feels great just being able to start with a clean slate and move forward and work toward 2010 with a more positive outlook on things. There's a lot of good potential on this team."

2002 Olympic gold medalist Tristan Gale considered retiring after last season, when her mother was among those complaining about Nardiello. That prompted a perception that Gale -- who didn't make the U.S. roster for Turin -- had a vendetta against the former coach.

Not true, she insists. Gale, perhaps more than anyone, wants last season to be forgotten.

"Right now, this year, we have a huge opportunity. We're starting from scratch," Gale said. "What we make of this season will start the trickle effect for the next four, all the way to Vancouver. There's competition on this team. But there's unity, too. We will be a team."

She's taking that promise seriously.

On a recent cold, snowy Friday night, she and Pikus-Pace -- considered rivals by many around the program a year ago -- went out for a movie, just the two of them.

"We are going to be a team that walks or drives to tracks together, walk in to the track together and be all for one, one for all," Garrett said. "There's no other way for this to work."

Pikus-Pace is all for it.

She was in Italy during the Olympics but couldn't bear to watch the skeleton races. Instead, she watched on TV in a rented cabin not far from Pisa, part of a vacation in which Pikus-Pace spent time in Venice and Rome -- but didn't venture near Turin.

Pikus-Pace came home feeling empty and desperately wants that to change in Vancouver four years from now.

"I couldn't bear it. I couldn't take it," Pikus-Pace said. "All my memories of last year are all about everything being hard, miserable and how much I was hurting. That's why I'm back. I need to find those two minutes where I'm on the ice and I can let myself go and shine."

(© 2006 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)