Skeleton athlete hanging on
LAKE PLACID, N.Y. – Noelle Pikus-Pace should have been in the Adirondacks this week, chasing her second straight overall World Cup championship and racing against the world’s other top skeleton sliders.
Nearly a month has passed since Pikus-Pace, America’s top women’s skeleton athlete, broke two bones in her right leg in a freak accident. In any other year, such an injury would probably have kept her away from the track for months.
Pikus-Pace is deep into an aggressive rehabilitation, is walking with just a small limp, is without crutches and wants to return to racing in Austria on Dec. 8 – her 23rd birthday. And not only does she plan to be in Turin, but Pikus-Pace hopes she’ll be tip-top at the Olympics there this February.
“As of now, sitting in my bed, sitting here icing my ankle, I’m pushing for tomorrow. I’m pushing to get through rehab tomorrow,” Pikus-Pace said in a teleconference Tuesday from her Orem, Utah, home – while her teammates prepped for this weekend’s World Cup race in Lake Placid. “It would be just awesome to get to the Olympics. … That would be the biggest joy. I couldn’t explain it.”
Pikus-Pace was injured Oct. 19 in Calgary, when she and a group of other American women’s skeleton sliders were standing near the end of the track during a training session. A four-man bobsled overran its stop area and crashed into the group, injuring several unsuspecting athletes – none worse than Pikus-Pace.
She saw the bobsled coming, but couldn’t get out of the way in time. Holding her sled, she tried in vain to jump out of the track, but the collision broke both her tibia and fibula; it can take someone who’s in relatively decent shape six months or more to fully recover from fracturing both lower-leg bones.
Pikus-Pace – the first U.S. woman to win the World Cup title – doesn’t plan to wait nearly that long.
“Her sled saved her from losing her leg,” said Tim Nardiello, the U.S. skeleton coach. “The left runner of her sled looked like her right leg when I got to her. I think her runner saved her from having her leg ripped right off. It was a horrific accident. We were very, very lucky.”
Pikus-Pace said she recalls a flood of emotions in the seconds that followed the crash, including bewilderment, confusion and self-pity – which lasted, in her words, “for like three seconds.”
That same night, she was in surgery, having a titanium rod inserted to support her leg. And so far, Pikus-Pace says she hasn’t endured any significant setbacks, other than pain.
“I believe she’ll be back,” Nardiello said. “She’s got the heart. She’s got the desire. She’s got the right mind-set. That’s more than half the battle.”