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Fate and chutzpah have led Katie Uhlaender to the brink of the Olympic team in skeleton, the sliding sport where competitors race down an icy track headfirst.
That's a change for Uhlaender, who jumps into most things with both feet.
After high school, Uhlaender figured she'd compete in freestyle skiing, where skiers do tricks in a half-pipe, similar to snowboarders.
That was before a chance meeting with bobsledder Sara Sprung, who worked in the Silverthorne Recreation Center near Uhlaender's home in Parshall, outside Breckenridge.
Sprung was squatting with heavy weights. Uhlaender, then 18, cut to the chase.
"I looked at her and said, 'Hey, do you sprint? Want to race?,'" Uhlaender tells it. "She's like, 'Who are you?' I said, 'My name's Katie... It'd be cool to run with you. Then we started training together."
Too light for bobsledding at about 120 pounds, Uhlaender tried skeleton, and it stuck.
"I love the feeling," Uhlaender said, a couple of days before she won her second World Cup bronze medal in the season's first two races in November. "It's like flying. Bobsled, it's like driving a car."
Uhlaender said she feels "more free" in skeleton, where you use your body to steer, similar to hang-gliders shifting their body weight.
On Friday, Uhlaender placed seventh in the World Cup race in Igls, Austria, the third of five races that will determine the U.S. Olympic team, to be announced by Jan. 16.
She is the top-ranked...