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Olympic hopeful Katie Uhlaender has responded to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) ruling after applying to join the US team for the Milan Cortina Winter Games.
CAS has ruled that it does not have jurisdiction to review his case against Bobsleigh Canada Skeleton (BCS) coach Joe Cecchini and the International Bobsleigh and Skeleton Federation (IBSF) regarding the results of the IBSF North American Cup and skeleton qualification for a place in the Winter Olympics.
Uhlaender appeared on PK Press Club Channel’s “America’s Newsroom” and told anchor Dana Perino that she didn’t necessarily disagree with the decision, but was now at a crossroads.
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Katie Uhlaender (United States) 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 if I disagree that it wasn’t within their jurisdiction to be fair. The dispute happened before the 10-day deadline,” she said. “What I want is something. I don’t know what the solution is at this point because I’ve exhausted all those avenues within the system and from what I’ve been able to understand, it will be up to the IOC and potentially the IBSF to allocate an additional slot for extreme circumstances. But we don’t know who should ask for that or exactly how to do it. That’s where I would ask (Vice President) Vance for help.”
Uhlaender was looking to qualify after missing the opportunity to qualify when Team Canada withdrew its athletes from the North American Cup race in early January, reducing the number of points the event could award. The points reduction prevented Uhlaender from winning enough to qualify.
An investigation by the IBSF found that Team Canada intentionally manipulated points during the competition in Lake Placid, New York. However, the IBSF also failed to review the results or issue sanctions accordingly. The United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee (USOPC) sent a letter to the International Olympic Committee (IOC) requesting that Uhlaender be given a spot. Fifteen other countries have joined this petition.
TEAM CANADA COACH EXPOSES HIMSELF AFTER Manipulating COMPETITION, U.S. OLYMPIANS RIVER
Katie Uhlaender of Team USA poses for a portrait during Team USA’s Beijing 2022 Olympics filming in Irvine, California, September 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 compete in. And she was doing it, and other nations were doing it, because you want to do your best,” Cecchini said. “It’s more of a flaw in the system. But we were within the rules.”
Cecchini also took direct aim at Uhlaender, saying she was not a “top athlete.”
“I don’t really want to speak negatively about Katie, but Katie wasn’t on the World Cup team. She was no longer a top athlete in that program. She was at the end of her career. Personally, I would rather race against Katie. She’s not as competitive as the other athletes,” he said. “That’s probably a very unfair thing to say and I don’t really know where I’m going with this, but that’s where we are.”
Uhlaender said on PK Press Club Channel that Cecchini wasn’t really getting to the bottom of the problem.
“I think that answer says a lot because he doesn’t address the problem at all, which is that he intentionally misled all the countries into thinking that this race was full of points,” she said. “He urged me to come race there and then, at the last second, he pulled all his athletes out. He didn’t hide it. He told me, he told another coach that 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 that the Swiss might have to retire because of that and he didn’t care. He said he wanted to eliminate any possibility that could threaten Canada’s second place even if it was only 1% And the saddest thing is that there was no threat.
“At the end of the races, the Korean athlete was not going to surpass Canada. He hurt all of us just because he wanted to eliminate any possibility, which is not in the spirit of sport. And that’s the problem. It’s not that it wasn’t in the rules – you should be able to remove athletes for legitimate reasons. But not to hurt people.”
U.S. skeleton team hopeful Katie Uhlaender poses for a photo during the 2018 U.S. 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 and join Lindsey Vonn as the only two athletes to have competed in 2002 and 2026.
For now, it doesn’t look like that’s going to happen.
