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To hear Mystique Ro talk about the first time she went on a skeleton run is to wonder why on earth the former track athlete stuck with one of the wilder Winter Olympic sports — one that involves hurtling face-first down an icy track at 80 to 90 mph on a thin fiberglass sled.It was 2016, and Ro was at a USA Bobsled & Skeleton training camp, hoping to try bobsled. Told she was too small to be a push athlete, coaches suggested she try skeleton, then handed her a helmet, goggles and a sled. Instructions were limited.
“The coach walks me to the line, lets me go, and all of a sudden, it’s going so fast, you cannot see anything, you cannot process anything,” Ro recalled, a horrified look on her face. “I get to the bottom, and it’s like, ‘I’m done, bye! I’m not doing that s— again!’”
She loaded her sled and herself into the van and waited for the other athletes.
“Everyone’s getting in, and some people are saying, ‘Oh my God, that was so cool!’ and others are saying, ‘That was crazy!’ And the expectation was just that we’re all going to go again. I don’t want to say it was a mob mentality, but …”
She shrugged. What else was she supposed to do?
So she went again. And again. By the end of the weekend, she had a new sport.
Then she had to tell her mom.
“I explain the whole thing, and she’s like, ‘Why would you throw yourself down a mountain at 80, 90 miles an hour? There is no logic in that!’” Ro laughed. “And you know what, there isn’t. There is not one reason I can give you, a normal person, about why I’m doing this. Because it’s not normal.”
But this month, Ro, 31, finally has a go-to answer that makes it, if not normal, at least understandable: She’s about to be an Olympian. It’s true that outsiders, and even some of her friends, still find her pursuit of skeleton absurd. But Ro, who used to dream of being on the U.S. Olympic track team, found that once she got the hang of this wild, obscure sport, she became obsessed with finding out just how good she could be.
A Nokesville, Va., native who attended Queens University of Charlotte, then a Division II school, Ro is set to make her Olympic debut in the women’s event on Feb. 13. Skeleton has been dominated in recent Olympics by Great Britain and Germany, but Ro is a contender in both the individual and mixed team events. U.S. skeleton coach Matt Antoine attributes her success to her preparation; her ability to start fast is what makes her a medal contender.
Ro took home two medals at the 2025 world championships, winning the mixed team competition with Austin Florian and finishing second in the women’s individual event. Her silver medal ended a 12-year world championship drought for the American women.
The Milan Cortina Games will be the first for the mixed team event, similar to the mixed relay event in track and field. The woman goes down the track first, followed by the man; times are combined for a final score.
Like many Olympic athletes, Ro trains year-round for a once-every-four-years shot at glory in a sport few know much about. But she knew what she was getting into, she said. Her siblings — she’s the second oldest of 11, and has a twin sister — think she’s cool, and like to brag about her to their friends. Her mom is finally on board with what she does … for the most part.
“I mean, she’s a typical parent,” Ro said. “She’d like me to have some financial security. And there is no money in this sport.”
That’s an understatement. Funding an Olympic dream doesn’t come cheap, and Ro’s had her share of odd jobs to pay for skeleton, including a brief stint behind the counter at an adult shop. (She likes to describe it as “retail, but a little spicy.”) Her Instagram profile takes you to various websites where you can donate directly to her cause. When she’s not traveling around Europe for the World Cup circuit, she works as a tour guide at the Lake Placid Olympic Center, the home of USA Bobsled & Skeleton headquarters.
“I work there, I train there, I live and breathe that atmosphere all the time,” she said. “And tourists love it because you have an athlete walking you around the facility, giving you their unique perspective. It’s really cool, but it’s not going to cover everything I need to do this sport.”
The financial reality, she admitted, can be crushing.
“There are a lot of crashouts that happen in the summer,” she said. “Like, how am I gonna do this? How am I gonna pay for this? Maybe I should quit and do something normal.”
But then she feels a pull back to the ice and wonders: What if she really can be great in this sport?
She’s “juggling everything, just for a shot” at an Olympic medal, knowing that even if she wins one, the payday will be significant but likely not life-altering. Team USA will award $37,500 for each gold, $22,500 for each silver and $15,000 for each bronze that its athletes win during the Milan Cortina Games. There are likely to be additional marketing opportunities via social media, too. Those are hard to come by right now, as an athlete in a less visible sport.
Skeleton, Ro said, is the ultimate example of doing something because you love it — even if at first, you thought you hated it.
Sliding sports like skeleton and bobsled are considered “talent transfer” sports, meaning many athletes get their start in something else, from track to swimming to downhill skiing. It’s easier, joked Florian, Ro’s mixed team partner, to consider flying down a mountain on a sled when you’ve already done it on skis. Before skeleton, Florian was a two-time All-American Alpine ski racer at Clarkson University in upstate New York.
Ro, for her part, draws the line at skiing. She knows she does a sport that’s wild to some, but watching Alpine skiers like Lindsey Vonn makes her queasy.
“Downhill is insane. People say, ‘You’re going fast, they’re going fast, what’s the difference?’” she said. “What’s the difference? I’m on the ground! They’re standing up! That’s a whole different ballgame! So, no thanks. I’ll come to the ski chalet, but I’ll just sit inside and drink some hot cocoa.”
When coaches told Ro she’d likely have to add at least 20 pounds to her 5-foot-4 frame to be considered for bobsled, she opted for a (literal) crash course in skeleton instead. She figured she’d already given up on her dream of being an Olympic track and field star — Team USA is widely considered the toughest roster in the world to make, and Ro described herself as “delusional” for thinking she had a shot coming out of a D-II school. So what was one more pivot, really?
“Making the Olympics is never an accident,” said Bianca Knight, who won a gold medal in the women’s 4×100-meter relay at the 2012 Games for the U.S. and now coaches track at Queens, starting there after Ro’s departure. “It’s the result of years of choosing discipline when no one is watching. … She’s earned this moment.”
While it might not seem like track would translate to the sled, at least outside of the start, it helped that Ro had a background in more technical events like hurdles. On TV, it looks like skeleton runs, which take under a minute, are only about going fast. But Ro quickly learned there are considerably more intricacies than she realized.
“For me, I’m very hands-on; that’s how I learn best,” she said. “But in this sport, ‘hands-on’ is 80 miles an hour, and you can’t do that all the time. You have to watch it, be absorbed in it. You have to adapt your learning style to the environment if you’re going to excel.”
Jim Vahrenkamp, who coached Ro at Queens, has stayed in touch with her, even helping her out financially as she pursued skeleton. He said he hasn’t necessarily been surprised by her success because, “for the most part, skeleton is very similar to everything she had previously trained for and what all track athletes train for — accelerating.”
What he has been impressed by is how quickly Ro learned how to steer the sled, an entirely new skill that takes about 90 percent of the race. “If you can’t drive, you can’t be relevant,” he said.
Ro’s biggest piece of advice for anyone observing the sport for the first time: If a skeleton athlete is lying down, fidgeting before their run, they’re probably not winning. Someone who remains still, though, is in the zone. And that’s where Ro is always trying to get.
“Every athlete’s trying to find a flow state, right? Me, I might have found it three times in eight whole years of doing this,” she said. “When you do, it feels like you’re gliding, like you’re flying. You kind of turn your brain off. And it’s addicting. It’s like, oh, let’s get that back.”
You spend the next year, or two or three, chasing that feeling, Ro said.
She’s hoping to find it again in Cortina.
This article originally appeared in The Athletic.
Olympics, Global Sports, Olympics, Women's Olympics
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