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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 the US team for the Milan Cortina Winter Games.
The CAS said it did not have jurisdiction to consider its 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’s qualification for a spot in the Winter Olympics.
Uhlaender appeared on Pak Gazette Channel’s “America’s Newsroom” and told host Dana Perino that he didn’t necessarily disagree with the ruling, but that he now finds himself 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 agree that it was outside their jurisdiction to be fair. The dispute occurred before the 10-day deadline,” he said. “What I want to happen is… something. I don’t know what the solution is right now because I’ve exhausted all these avenues within the system and from what I can understand, it will be up to the IOC and potentially the IBSF to allocate an extra place for extreme circumstances. But we don’t know who should apply for it or exactly how to do it. This is where I would ask (Vice President) Vance for help.”
Uhlaender sought qualification after missing out on the opportunity to qualify when Team Canada withdrew 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 win enough to qualify.
An IBSF investigation found that Team Canada intentionally manipulated points at the competition in Lake Placid, New York. However, the IBSF also did not review any of the results or impose any penalties as a result. The United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee (USOPC) sent a letter to the International Olympic Committee (IOC) requesting that Uhlaender be granted a spot. Fifteen other countries have joined that request.
TEAM CANADA COACH SPEAKS AFTER HE WAS FOUND TO HAVE MANIPULATED THE COMPETITION, US OLYMPIAN FIGHTS BACK
Team USA’s Katie Uhlaender poses for a portrait during the Beijing 2022 Team USA Olympic shoot in Irvine, California, on September 12, 2021. (Tom Pennington/Getty Images for Team USA)
“This is all within the rules. There’s nothing wrong with those things. And people can be strategic in the races they enter. And she was doing that, and other nations were doing the same, because you want to do your best,” Cecchini said. “This is, if anything, a failure of the system. But we were within the rules.”
Cecchini also took direct aim at Uhlaender, saying she is not a “top-level 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 on that program. She was at the end of her career. Personally I would rather compete against Katie. She’s not as competitive as the other athletes,” he said. “It’s probably really unfair to say it and not really where I’m going with this, but that’s where we are with it.”
Uhlaender said on Pak Gazette Channel that Cecchini wasn’t really addressing the issue seriously.
“I think that answer says it all because it’s not addressing the issue at all, which is that it intentionally misled all the countries into believing that this race was full of points,” he said. “He urged me to come run there and then at the last second he pulled out all his athletes. He didn’t hide it. He told me, he told another coach that he had done it for the points, and he knew I was going to hurt myself and he knew he was going to hurt the Danish athlete and the Swiss athlete might have to withdraw because of this 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 sad thing is that there was no threat.
“At the end of the races, the Korean athlete was not going to beat Canada. He hurt us all simply 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 take athletes out 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 hoped to compete in all six of her Olympic Games and join Lindsey Vonn as the only two athletes to compete in 2002 and 2026.
For now, it doesn’t look like it’s going to happen.
