Now a mom, Pikus-Pace set to get back on her sled
Toolbox
By Tim Reynolds Associated Press - Published: November 28, 2008
LAKE PLACID, N.Y. — Sometime Friday morning, while her baby is fast asleep on the other side of the world, American skeleton racer Noelle Pikus-Pace will find a quiet spot to be alone.
She'll pray. She'll think of her husband and family. And then her mind will turn to 10-month-old Lacee, her first child.
"Now I know why I'm out here," Pikus-Pace said. "If I'm going to be away from my family and from her, it has to be for a darn good reason."
Oh, there's a darn good reason: The lure of Olympic gold, the medal she never got a chance to race for in 2006, the prize that has brought her back to the track, with only a thin layer of lycra to shield her from the bitter cold as she throws her body onto a thin metal sled and slides headfirst down an icy slope at 80 mph.
It's an obsession, really, and it resumes Friday when a new World Cup season begins in Winterberg, Germany.
"Noelle looks great," Greg Sand, one of the U.S. skeleton coaches, said from Germany this week. "She's sliding fast in training and has pushed personal bests at every track she's been to thus far this year. She started off the season in Lake Placid by establishing a new track record on this year's world championship track and I think that gave her a good amount of reassurance and confidence as we head toward our World Cup schedule."
That confidence is already showing.
Pikus-Pace missed last year's World Cup season because she was pregnant with Lacee, but now, fitter and perhaps stronger than ever, the 2007 world champion from Eagle Mountain, Utah is eager to try and reclaim her perch atop the sport.
"I don't want to focus on results, not yet. I want to get comfortable on my sled again," Pikus-Pace said. "But a race is a race and I won't let you beat me at Monopoly, so why should I let you beat me out here?"
Fair enough.
Given the colossal ups-and-downs Pikus-Pace has endured over the last three years, it's a bit hard to believe she's still racing.
She was the No. 1-ranked women's racer in the world three years ago when she suffered a badly broken leg, courtesy of an out-of-control bobsled that didn't stop in time at the end of a training run and crashed into Pikus-Pace, who was standing near the finish line. That wreck cost her a chance of racing at the Turin Olympics, and nearly sent her into retirement.
"There was a point, after the Olympics, when I felt like quitting," Pikus-Pace said. "It wasn't when I got hit, because then, I had drive like I'd never felt before. But that next summer was the most difficult time for me mentally, how gloomy you get. I just had to get down on my knees, pray for help and have that faith that I can do it again. It's that foundation of faith that has gotten me to where I am right now and pushed me to come back."
A few years ago, Pikus-Pace's plan probably was to win Olympic gold in 2006, then leave the sport and start a family with husband Janson, a project manager at a steel fabrication shop.
The crash changed all that.
Pikus-Pace and her husband didn't want to wait any longer for children, so she took last season off and now will be one of a rapidly growing number of mothers on the World Cup skeleton circuit, joining Swiss star and Olympic champion Maya Pedersen, Olympic silver medalist Shelley Rudman from Britain and others.
"I had no idea what it took to be a mom," Pikus-Pace said. "Seeing her at the Olympics, Dara Torres is now one of my role models. Paula Radcliffe, too. I had no idea what it took mentally to have a child and come back out and train and compete."
Those comparisons aren't totally fair. In some ways, Torres and Radcliffe have it much easier.
Torres can swim wherever there's a pool. Radcliffe, maybe the world's best women's marathon runner, can run anywhere.
Pikus-Pace isn't so lucky.
There's only two sliding tracks in the United States: Park City, Utah, an hour from her home, or Lake Placid, where the U.S. Bobsled and Skeleton Federation (along with USA Luge) is based. So that's why she kissed her husband and daughter goodbye this fall, packed up her sled and went back to the Adirondacks of upstate New York to resume that Olympic quest.
"I have the absolute best support group that I could ever imagine," Pikus-Pace said. "My family is amazing. My friends are amazing. I know when I'm gone, Lacee is getting loved the way I love her and I had to know that in order for me to be here and give myself. I have much more to think about than just sliding. There's a whole new realm to life for me now. It's a whole new love and that's my life."
It's not like she won't see them for months at a time.
The U.S. skeleton federation designed this season's schedule, in part, so Pikus-Pace wouldn't be separated from her family for more than a couple weeks at once.
She made a chart out of construction paper, counting down the days between times when she'll see Lacee and Janson again.
That, and five phone calls a day, are enough to get her through — and let her focus on winning races again.
"She's spacing out the season pretty well so she shouldn't be without Lacee for much more than a couple of weeks at a time," Sand said. "I know that's probably a long time for her, but she seems to be handling it pretty well."
Before deciding to start her family, Pikus-Pace was at the top of her sliding game.
Fueled by the disappointment of missing the 2006 Olympics, Pikus-Pace went on a tear the following season, capped by winning her first world championship.
If she can regain and maintain that form for the next 15 months, she'll almost certainly head into Vancouver as a gold-medal favorite.
"I don't feel like I've lost a whole lot since winning worlds in 2007," Pikus-Pace said. "So I'm just ready and excited to take it back. I didn't have a chance last year, so I can't say that I lost it, because I wasn't there. But I want to take it back."
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