Athlete Bios
Skeleton
Hollingsworth looks to conquer Whistler track
Last Updated: Saturday, February 6, 2010 | 8:50 PM ET
New York Times for CBC Sports
Mellisa Hollingsworth won Canada's first Olympic medal in women's skeleton in 2006. (Matthew Stockman/Getty Images)Mellisa Hollingsworth won bronze at the 2006 Olympics in women’s skeleton, becoming the first Canadian woman to win a medal in the event.
Even with a home advantage, Hollingsworth will have to overcome an initial fear of the Whistler Sliding Centre, site of the Olympic track. Her first experiences there ended with more crashes than successful slides.
“It was a long summer of doubt,” Hollingsworth said. “A lot of people probably wouldn’t have known that with me being on the team for 15 years and winning an Olympic medal.”
Hollingsworth won silver at the 2000 world championships and captured the overall title in 2005-06. She narrowly missed racing in the 2002 Olympics, losing to her teammate Lindsay Alcock in the month before the Games. Hollingsworth still decided to attend as a spectator, a journey she credits with helping motivate her for the 2006 Turin Games.
She is the cousin of a male skeleton athlete, Ryan Davenport, who introduced her to the sport and builds the sleds they use.
Hollingsworth, 29, was raised in the small town of Eckville, Alta., population 1,019.
As for the unusual spelling of her first name, Hollingsworth told NBC: “My dad wanted to take myself and my brother and my sister to Disneyland. I needed my birth certificate, so we applied for one and it kept coming as two L’s and one S, instead of one L and two S’s. They were like, ‘If you want to change it, it’ll cost you X amount of dollars and you’ll have to go to court and it will be this big long process.’ So we thought, ‘Well, we’ve got to go to Disneyland next week, so we’ll just keep it.’”
