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Olympic hopeful Katie Uhlaender reacted to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) ruling after she filed a case to join Team USA for the Milan Cortina Winter Games.
CAS said it had no jurisdiction to consider her case against Bobsleigh Canada Skeleton (BCS) coach Joe Cecchini and the International Bobsled and Skeleton Federation (IBSF) over the results of the IBSF North American Cup Race and Skeleton qualification for a spot at the Winter Olympics.
Appearing on Pakinomist Channel’s “America’s Newsroom,” Uhlaender told anchor Dana Perino that she didn’t necessarily disagree with the verdict, but she now stands at a crossroads.
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Katie Uhlaender (USA) competes in the women’s skeleton heat 4 during the Pyeongchang 2018 Olympic Winter Games at the Olympic Sliding Center on February 17, 2018. (Soobum Im/USA TODAY Sports)
“I don’t know that I disagree that it was outside of their jurisdiction to be fair. The dispute occurred prior to the 10-day window,” she said. “What I’d like to happen is – something. I don’t know what the solution is at this point because I’ve exhausted all these avenues in the system and from what I could understand it would be up to the IOC and potentially the IBSF to allocate an extra seat for extreme circumstances. But we don’t know who to ask for it or exactly how to do it. That’s where I’ve asked for help.”
Uhlaender sought qualification after she missed the chance to qualify when Team Canada pulled athletes from the North American Cup race in early January, reducing the number of points the event could award. The points reduction made it impossible for Uhlaender to earn enough to qualify.
An investigation by the IBSF found that Team Canada deliberately manipulated the points at the competition in Lake Placid, New York. However, the IBSF also did not audit any of the results or deliver any sanctions as a result. The United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee (USOPC) sent a letter to the International Olympic Committee (IOC) requesting that Uhlaender be awarded a spot. Fifteen other countries have joined this petition.
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Katie Uhlaender of Team United States poses for a portrait during the Team USA Beijing 2022 Olympic shoot in Irvine, Calif., on Sept. 12, 2021. (Tom Pennington/Getty Images for Team USA)
“It’s all within the rules. There’s nothing wrong with those things. And people can be strategic in the races they enter. And she did and other nations did because you want to put your best foot forward,” Cecchini said. “This is a system error if anything. But we were within the rules.”
Cecchini also took direct aim at Uhlaender, saying she is not a “top-tier athlete.”
“I don’t really want to talk negatively about Katie, but Katie wasn’t on the World Cup team. She wasn’t a top-tier in that program anymore. She was at the end of her career. I personally would rather race against Katie. She’s not as competitive as the other athletes,” he said. “It’s probably really unfair to say and not really where I want to go with this, but that’s where we are with it.”
Uhlaender said on Pakinomist Channel that Cecchini didn’t really take the issue to heart.
“I think that answer says it all because he doesn’t address the problem at all, which is that he intentionally fooled all the countries into thinking this race was full points,” she said. “He encouraged me to come there and then, at the last second, he pulled all his athletes. He didn’t hide it. He told me, he told another coach, he did it for the points, and he knew he was going to hurt me, and he knew he was going to hurt the Danish athlete, and the Swiss girl might have to withdraw because of this, and he said any threat could avoid it. Canada’s second place, even if it was only 1%. And the sad thing is that there was no threat.
“At the end of the races, the Korean athlete wasn’t going to surpass Canada. He hurt us all just because he wanted to eliminate any possibility, which is not in the spirit of the sport. And that’s the point. It’s not that it wasn’t within the rules – you should be able to pull athletes for legitimate reasons. But not to hurt people.”
Team USA skeleton hopeful Katie Uhlaender poses for a photo during the 2018 US Olympic Team Media Summit at the Grand Summit Hotel on September 25, 2017. (Kevin Jairaj/USA TODAY Sports)
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Uhlaender added that she had hoped to compete in her six Olympic Games, joining Lindsey Vonn as the only two athletes to have competed in 2002 and 2026.
Right now, it doesn’t look like that will happen.
