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If you kept tabs on local athletes during the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, you’re familiar with Katie Uhlaender.
The daughter of a former Major League Baseball pitcher, Uhlaender—who spoke with 5280 in February—is a two-time overall World Cup skeleton champion, although she didn’t live up to her potential at the Olympics.
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Now, she tells The Associated Press she wasn’t fully recovered from breaking her knee twice in the months before the winter games, which fell on the one-year anniversary of her father’s death.
Five months removed from the stressful Olympics, where she placed 11th, Uhlaender is considering a diversion from skeleton, which could land her in the 2012 summer Olympics in London as a weightlifter. Such a move would make her the 10th American to make Olympic teams in both the winter and summer games.
She plans on competing in the Rocky Mountain State Games in a few weeks, an Olympic-style competition for Colorado athletes. If she does well there, she could be laying the foundation for 2012.
“It’s been a horrible last couple years for me,” Uhlaender says. “Now I know I don’t want to walk away from a sport until I give it my all. I’m super-excited for more than one reason now.”