Cross Training: A Racer on Ice Dreams of Summer Games, Too

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Ms. Uhlaender competes at the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics

Two days before one of the most important races of her life in skeleton, a solo sledding sport, Katie Uhlaender hit the weight room—and hit it hard.

She "maxed out" at 225 pounds in one maneuver that required her to lift the equivalent of an NFL defensive back over her head. But the rigorous training didn't thrill her national-team coach, Tuffy Latour. He would have preferred that she focus, for at least a couple of days, on her position as one of the world's premier skeleton racers—and not on her dreams of becoming an Olympic weightlifter.

For Ms. Uhlaender, 27 years old, this balancing act was nothing new. She worked out the stiffness and soreness just long enough to win the women's skeleton world championship last Friday in Lake Placid, N.Y. She embraced her mother at the finish line, shed some tears and then had exactly nine days before her next challenge: an appearance this weekend at the U.S. Olympic weightlifting trials in Columbus, Ohio, where she will vie for a spot in the London Games, which start at the end of July.

"She's just a warrior," Mr. Latour says. "I wouldn't rule her out of anything."

Nicole Jomantas

Ms. Uhlaender at the 2010 Rocky Mountain State Games.

The sports world has seen its share of successful two-sport athletes. Deion Sanders and Bo Jackson, both of whom played professional football and baseball, are two of the most well-known examples. A handful of athletes have competed in both the Summer and Winter Olympics—most notably Clara Hughes, a Canadian who has medaled in cycling and speed skating.

But skeleton and weightlifting have about as much in common as quilting and auto repair, and that is what makes Ms. Uhlaender so unusual.

Skeleton looks like something straight out of Willy Wonka: Hurtling face-first down a frozen track on a sled that resembles a cafeteria tray, Ms. Uhlaender often tops out at 80 miles per hour with her chin inches from the ice. A two-time Winter Olympian, she won world cup titles in 2007 and 2008. Her friends describe her as fearless, and that mentality has helped in recent months as she tackled both sports. "It's been kind of hectic," she says.

While most of her skeleton teammates lifted weights about twice a week, Ms. Uhlaender found time to hoist barbells five or six times a week. That alone was something of a physiological feat. Between April 2009 and November 2010, she underwent five surgeries after twice shattering her left kneecap, first in a snowmobile accident and then while dancing with friends in Las Vegas. She hobbled around on crutches for six months. She says she is still hindered by a lack of full motor function in her left hip.

With the weightlifting trials approaching, her main goal this week has been to shed nearly eight pounds from her 136-pound, 5-foot-3 frame to make her weight class. (At the trials, she will compete in the 58-kilogram class, which is about 127.6 pounds.) As a skeleton racer, she can afford to be a bit heavier. The extra weight doesn't affect her explosiveness at the start, when she sprints between 30 and 40 meters before hopping aboard her sled.

She got started with the skeleton as a high-school student in Colorado when she challenged a young woman to a footrace at a rec center. The woman just happened to be a competitive bobsledder, and she encouraged Ms. Uhlaender to try out the skeleton. Eight weeks later, she was the national champion.

"That's Uhlaender," says Joy Bryant, a skeleton teammate who, like everyone else on the national team, refers to her by her last name. "She lives her life through competition. She's extreme."

Ms. Uhlaender faces hurdles away from the training center. She chose two of the least lucrative sports on the planet.

While Ms. Uhlaender receives an annual stipend from the U.S. Olympic Committee and free dormitory-style housing at its training facilities in Lake Placid and Colorado Springs, Colo., she says she "makes just enough to survive." She has a couple of sponsorships, including one with a mouth-guard company.

One problem is that the skeleton is an expensive sport, heavy on equipment. She says she recently paid $1,000 for a pair of "runners," which are the blades on the sled that make contact with the ice; $1,050 for an aerodynamic racing suit; and $1,000 for a helmet. She paid a shoemaker $100 to drill 530 tiny, ice-gripping needles into the soles of the track-and-field spikes she uses during races. "There are times when I put stuff on my credit card and close my eyes," she says.

Ms. Uhlaender banked $5,000 for winning her world title last week. (The old rules about amateurism no longer apply to Olympians, who can earn prize money and sign sponsorship deals.) That is a huge help, but her primary source of income is unconventional: cattle.

With the $10,000 she claimed for winning her skeleton world title in 2007, she took her father's advice and bought 10 pregnant cows. She keeps them on her family's ranch in McDonald, Kan. She usually spends the month of June there, helping tag, brand and breed them before selling them. She is earning about $5,000 a year off her initial investment, she said.

She says she continues to draw inspiration from her father, Ted, a former major-league outfielder who died of cancer in 2009. Philadelphia Phillies manager Charlie Manuel, who was a friend of Ms. Uhlaender's father, says he considers her "the most determined woman I've ever seen in my whole life."

At the weightlifting trials, Ms. Uhlaender will be a self-described underdog. With just two Olympic spots available to Americans, Ms. Uhlaender is seeded 15th. Regardless of how she does, she wants to continue to pursue both weightlifting and skeleton.

Kyle Pierce, a professor of kinesiology at Louisiana State-Shreveport, which houses the USA Weightlifting Development Center, says Ms. Uhlaender has plenty of potential. After all, she only started lifting weights seriously about a year-and-a-half ago as part of her post-injury rehab.

Mr. Pierce, who has worked with her, observes that the Russian great Vasily Alekseyev didn't peak as a weightlifter until he was in his mid-30s.

"I'm going to keep going until it's time to have babies," Ms. Uhlaender says. "And I don't have a man, so that still seems far off."

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