Since he was a child, Staten Island native Alex Taddeo has dreamed of qualifying for the Olympics as a track and field athlete.
The Monsignor Farrell and Wagner College alum is still chasing that Olympics dream — it just looks a little different now.
After the Grant City native learned about the strong pipeline of NCAA track athletes transitioning to skeleton and bobsled, he decided he would swap the track for the ice despite never competing in either winter sport.
Taddeo has since qualified for a Team USA developmental camp in Lake Placid, New York, which begins Monday. Lake Placid is one of the major official Winter Olympic training grounds in the nation.
“When I was watching the 2026 Olympics in Italy, there was a guy on Team USA from Monmouth who ran track like me, and that sparked my interest,” said the 22-year-old. “Then I saw the NCAA post about all their athletes from track that transitioned into bobsled and skeleton, and I thought, ‘There must be a pathway for me too.”
Taddeo attended a combine in May, one day after graduating from Wagner. He did enough to impress, and earned the invite to camp.
He believes having the track and field mechanics down pat have allowed him to have early success in sports he’s still learning.
“I was very explosive as a short sprinter, so I’ve tended to hone in on the first 30 or 40 meters of my race, where I need to be explosive,” said Taddeo. “Now it’s just about practicing different angles I need to hit in order to project my body forward,” he said.
“Everything that I’ve been trying to craft myself to be perfectly transitioned over. It was just something I was able to pick up almost as if I’ve been doing it my whole life.”
Taddeo arrived in Lake Placid within the last two weeks to train ahead of the official start of camp.
“It’s been a lot of fun up here. There’s a lot of good athletes and good people,” he said.
“It’s a lot of new experiences. We’ll practice for about two hours pushing the bobsled down a steep track of ice, which is a lot of fatigue on the body, but the coaches have been great to help us, especially with recovery and feeling good the next day.
“Being able to compete in track and do well in school was challenging, but it made me realize that anything is possible. (Monsignor Farrell and Wagner College) really set me on a good path to be able to pursue something like this.”
Staten Island native Alex Taddeo poses at the U.S. Olympic Training Center in Lake Placid, where he begins a bobsled/skeleton camp on Oct. 5.Alex Taddeo
There may be a long way to go before the 2030 Olympic Games in France, but Taddeo said competing for Team USA would fulfill a lifelong goal. Should he make the Olympic team, he’d be in good company, joining Staten Islander-born athletes turned Olympians Robert Pipkins, Richard Parke, Silvia Fontana, and Gary di Silvestri.
Pipkins, a Staten Island Sports Hall of Famer and the first African-American to represent the United States in the luge, competed at the ‘92 and ‘94 Winter Olympics; Parke, a bobsledder, won gold for the U.S. at the 1928 Games; Fontana, a figure skater, competed for Italy at the 2022 and 2006; and di Silvestri competed for Dominica at the 2014 Winter Olympics.
For Taddeo, the chance to become yet another borough native to reach the biggest stage “would be unreal for me.”
“I always wanted to make the Olympics for track, but I never thought about the possibility of something else. When I got this opportunity, it gave me extra motivation, and I’m one step closer to achieving a dream.”