{"id":432075,"date":"2026-01-27T04:34:10","date_gmt":"2026-01-27T04:34:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/432075\/"},"modified":"2026-01-27T04:34:10","modified_gmt":"2026-01-27T04:34:10","slug":"ioc-doesnt-move-on-us-request-that-katie-uhlaender-get-an-olympic-skeleton-wild-card-spot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/432075\/","title":{"rendered":"IOC doesn\u2019t move on US request that Katie Uhlaender get an Olympic skeleton wild-card spot"},"content":{"rendered":"

Katie Uhlaender\u2019s hopes of making the women\u2019s skeleton field for next month\u2019s Milan Cortina Games<\/a> have been thwarted again, after U.S. officials said Monday that the International Olympic Committee didn\u2019t take action on their request for her to receive a discretionary spot.<\/p>\n

The U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee last week asked for Uhlaender to get a spot, citing how her qualifying chances were hurt by Canada\u2019s decision to pull four sliders from a race and limit the available number of rankings points earlier this month.<\/p>\n

The International Bobsled and Skeleton Federation \u2014 the sport\u2019s governing body \u2014 investigated that race and said no rules were broken. USOPC chief of sport and athlete services Rocky Harris said the IOC deferred to that in its reply to the Americans.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe got a response this morning that they are supporting the international federation\u2019s decision on the matter,\u201d Harris said.<\/p>\n

Harris said he\u2019ll meet with Uhlaender to \u201csee how she wants to move forward.\u201d Uhlaender has previously said she\u2019s willing to appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport.<\/p>\n

USA Bobsled and Skeleton declined to comment.<\/p>\n

The Americans are sending Kelly Curtis and Mystique Ro to the Olympics<\/a> in women\u2019s skeleton; both were formally nominated to the team by the USOPC<\/a> on Monday.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were requesting an additional slot for the sport to allocate to Katie, so it would not have taken away from one of our currently competing athletes,\u201d Harris said.<\/p>\n

The 41-year-old Uhlaender \u2014 hoping to be the first woman to compete in the Winter Games six times for the U.S. \u2014 fell just short of qualifying for the Olympic team. If the North American Cup race in question had at least 21 sliders, which would have been the case before Canada\u2019s decision to hold some racers out, she may have earned an Olympic berth.<\/p>\n

Uhlaender won that race in Lake Placid, New York, which had 19 sliders. She received 25% fewer rankings points than she would have in a full field, and that difference left her behind Ro in the final standings.<\/p>\n

Uhlaender did not qualify for the U.S. World Cup team entering this season, which made her Olympic quest even more challenging. She competed on the lower-tier NAC and Asian Cup circuits in an effort to collect enough points to qualify.<\/p>\n

Canada has insisted it acted within the rules.<\/p>\n

Uhlaender said last week that she was hoping the IOC would \u201csend a powerful message to young athletes everywhere: that standing up for ethics and integrity may be difficult, but it matters.\u201d<\/p>\n

Want more sports news? Sign up for the Sports Omelette to get all our analysis on Denver\u2019s teams.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Katie Uhlaender\u2019s hopes of making the women\u2019s skeleton field for next month\u2019s Milan Cortina Games have been thwarted…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":432076,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,3832,204825,2558,204826,3,1082,99,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":{"0":"post-432075","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-states","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-colorado","10":"tag-katie-uhlaender","11":"tag-latest-headlines","12":"tag-milano-cortina-olympics-2026","13":"tag-news","14":"tag-olympics","15":"tag-sports","16":"tag-united-states","17":"tag-united-states-of-america","18":"tag-unitedstates","19":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","20":"tag-us","21":"tag-usa"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/432075","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=432075"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/432075\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/432076"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=432075"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=432075"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=432075"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}