Noelle Pikus-Pace

Medal record
Skeleton
World Championships
Gold	2007 St. Moritz	Women
Silver	2007 St. Moritz	Mixed team
Silver	2005 Calgary	Women

Noelle Pikus-Pace (born December 8, 1982 in Orem, Utah) is an American skeleton racer who competed from 2000 to 2010. She won three medals at the FIBT World Championships with a gold (Women's skeleton: 2007) and two silvers (Women's skeleton: 2005, Mixed bobsleigh-skeleton team event: 2007).

After winning the silver medal in the women's skeleton event at the 2005 FIBT World Championships in Calgary, Pikus-Pace emerged as one of the favorites to medal at the upcoming Winter Olympics in Turin. That would change on October 19, 2005 at the bobsleigh, luge, and skeleton track in Calgary when she broke her right leg after she and her teammates were hit by a four-man bobsleigh that failed to brake after the finish line. The bobsleigh ejected out of the end of the track and hit Pikus-Pace and teammate Lea Ann Parsley, narrowly missing three other teammates. Pikus-Pace underwent surgery to repair her broken leg, including an insertion of a titanium rod in her right leg. She would return to competition seven weeks later at Igls, Austria, finishing 20th. She would chronicle her comeback from the 2005 freak accident which prevented her participation at Turin. This story was first told in the critically acclaimed documentary 114 Days: The Race to Save a Dream. The US Bobsleigh and Skeleton Federation would petition both the FIBT and the IOC to include Pikus-Pace in the women's skeleton competition, but to no avail. The only American representative would be Katie Uhlaender in women's skeleton, and she would finish sixth in the event.

Pikus-Pace announced in an October 3, 2007 Associated Press report that she would take the 2007-08 Skeleton World Cup off due to being six months pregnant. Her child, a girl, would be due in January 2008. This was also announced on FIBT's website on October 5, 2007. On January 19, 2008, Noelle and her husband Janson welcomed their daughter Lacee Lynne Pace. She weighed 7 pounds, 12 ounces and was 21 inches long.

Pikus-Pace won the women's Skeleton World Cup overall title in 2004-5.

She finished fifth in the 2008-09 Skeleton World Cup season opener in Winterberg on November 28, 2008.

It was announced on 17 January 2010 that Pikus-Pace had qualified for the 2010 Winter Olympics. She competed in the 2010 Games, finishing in fourth place, with a sled designed by her husband after her two other sleds had been damaged, including one where her leg was broken in October 2005 during a practice run in Calgary. Her second sled was damaged during transport to the FIBT World Championships 2009 in Lake Placid, New York. Pace's husband, a project manager at NuQuest, a metal fabrication company in Salt Lake City, Utah, designed a skeleton sled in accordance to FIBT regulations to help her out.

Pikus-Pace finished fourth in the women's skeleton event, her last race as a skeleton racer.

References

• Zillgitt, Jeff. "Pikus-Pace, like her sled, is a rebuilding project". USA Today 12 February 2010. 11E.

External links

• Official website
• Huber Edges Szymkowiak in Skeleton WC Opener. at the Fédération Internationale de Bobsleigh et de Tobogganing (28 November 2008 article accessed 29 November 2008).
• Noelle Pikus-Pace at the Fédération Internationale de Bobsleigh et de Tobogganing
• List of women's skeleton World Cup champions since 1997.
• Mixed bobsleigh-skeleton world championship medalists since 2007
• NBCOlympics.com 16 January 2010 on the bobsleigh and skeleton slots for the US Team for the 2010 Winter Olympics. - accessed 17 January 2010.
• Skeletonsport.com profile
• Noelle Pikus-Pace at the United States Olympic Committee
• US Olympic Committee story on Pikus-Pace's return from her injury in late 2005
• Women's skeleton world championship medalists since 2000

Persondata
Name	Pikus-Pace, Noelle
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	December 8, 1982
Place of birth
Date of death
Place of death