Canadian Kelly in spotlight for wrong reasons
Controversy follows skeleton veteran leading up to Vancouver Games
Last Updated: Monday, January 11, 2010 | 3:58 PM ET
Dan Robson, CBC Sports
Michelle Kelly races in the women's Skeleton World Championships in Altenberg, Germany, Feb. 23, 2008. (Eckehard Schulz/Associated Press) Michelle Kelly's voice is heavy with frustration.
The 35-year-old skeleton racer is in Altenburg, Germany, preparing for the last race of the World Cup season. Over the phone she sounds exhausted.
Perhaps it's all the training. Perhaps it's just the topic.
"There has been a lot of distraction," she said flatly. "Certainly, I would say, [it's] the roughest year I've had in my 15 years of sliding … and not really what I expected for my Olympic season."
Kelly has just been asked, again, about an ongoing controversy over the steel runners on her sled, which has overshadowed what is likely her last shot at the Olympics.
She was initially left off the World Cup team after being disqualified at the Canadian championships in October because the FIBT — skeleton's governing body — said seals on her steel runners were either missing or had worn off, violating international competition regulations. The ruling was later overturned, because the jury that disqualified Kelly did not have a quorum.
Then, at a World Cup race in Italy, Don Wilson, the CEO of Bobsleigh Canada Skeleton, pulled Kelly out of a race because FIBT declared her runners ineligible during a pre-race inspection. Kelly insists she did nothing wrong.
Wilson later apologized, saying he had Kelly's best interests in mind. But the damage was done. The debacle dominated pre-Olympic coverage of the niche sport.
Kelly was front and centre, for all the wrong reasons.
"I've moved on and I have to move forward," she said. "They realized it was their error."
Overshadowed by controversy
When asked how she will get past the distraction and perform, Kelly replies with a series of canned clichés: "Take each race at a time" — "Just keep moving forward" — "Stay positive."
But the reality is that this "distraction" has now become the focus of this profile for the Olympic games.
Ideally, it would have led with something like this: when Michelle Kelly was five years old, she won a medal at a gymnastics competition and told her mother, Marlyne Blatz, that one day she would win an Olympic medal too.
Or, maybe, that Kelly once considered a career as a professional wrestler, and actually had a tryout with Calgary's famous Hart family.
Or even better, that Kelly only got into skeleton because of a dare.
Michelle Kelly, centre, celebrates after winning the FIBT Skeleton World Cup women's final in Winterberg, Germany, Feb. 8, 2008. (Eckehard Schulz/Associated Press) A member of the Swiss men's skeleton team challenged her in 1995 while she was in Switzerland bobsledding. He didn't think she would get on the small sled, and race down the bobsled track head first, stomach down. He said she couldn't do it. Kelly did, and then she stuck with it.
A year later she won her first international race.
"I really thought I would try one run … that would be enough to win the dare, and I'd go back to being in bobsleigh," Kelly said. "This is 15 years later, and I'm still doing it."
Kelly's accomplished career is full of great moments. But today, they all seem to fade away.
"When you're threatened with the fact of everything you love, you could lose, you start to look at it in a different way," she said. "I just want to be there."
One more chance
Kelly, who was born in Fort St. John, B.C., was a national-level gymnast and star track athlete as a teenager growing up in Grande Prairie, Alta. She went to the University of Calgary to try her hand at bobsleigh, hoping it would eventually lead to her dream of winning an Olympic medal.
Along the way she was a construction worker, a waitress, and an office assistant — all jobs she took to survive while training to win gold.
In 2002, she earned a spot at the Olympics in Salt Lake City. A year later, she was the overall World Cup skeleton champion.
Kelly, who lives in Calgary, has had a long, successful career, but the dream of winning an Olympic medal burns deep within her.
"It's definitely a battle of the mind," she said. "It's just a matter of battling your own inner demons."
When asked about the challenges she has faced, Kelly said the deaths of both her father and father-in-law had the greatest effect on her. "There are more important things in the world," she said of her career as a world-class skeleton racer.
Last year her mother was diagnosed with breast cancer.
"Just being able to see something like my mom's strength to deal with what she's dealing with … it kind of puts things in perspective," Kelly said.
During her first Olympic appearance in 2002, Kelly said she didn't appreciate the experience enough. She was an alternate in Torino in 2006, so 2010 will likely be her last Olympic Games experience. She plans to embrace every moment.
"I've been very fortunate in my career and in life to do something that I love for as long as I have. There's a lot of people who don't get to experience that," she said. "I'm pretty lucky."
