The e-mail may have been sent to everyone, but it was meant for Kelly Magnuson.
The message, at the top of Magnuson’s inbox six years ago, was from her new employer, the Salt Lake Organizing Committee. It was an invitation offering SLOC employees the chance to actually try out some of the sports they’d see at the 2002 Olympics.
Suffice it to say, that piqued Magnuson’s interest.
“Just because I have always done sports and it just sounded like not many people had the opportunity,” said Magnuson, who graduated from Springfield High in 1996 and Northwest Christian College in 2000.
Magnuson, who plays professional football, moved from Springfield to Utah in 2001 because she had no other choice in her mind’s eye. She’s a sports junkie, and the Winter Olympics only comes around once every four years.
So 16 hours away and with no job lined up, Magnuson packed her bags and headed east.
A few weeks after getting the job – and that e-mail – Magnuson found herself strapping on football pads and squeezing into track spikes as she peered down one of only two skeleton tracks in the United States.
Skeleton, a winter sport, was being added permanently to the Olympic program.
“I was pretty excited and really wasn’t worried,” said Magnuson, who also worked as a member of NBC’s driving crew during the Olympics, delivering athletes and raw video footage back to the network’s headquarters. “I just wanted to go down.”
It looked fun, so Magnuson threw on a helmet and got on the metal and fiberglass toboggan. She faced a 1,300-yard ice slide.
And for the next few hours, Magnuson was a speeding bullet.
That night, she smiled to herself. After experiencing the rush of flying 80 mph headfirst once, the 5-foot-5-inch woman just had to do it again.
Magnuson kept coming back to the track, and the sport – and now she’s trying to become a skeleton Olympian. Magnuson finished in 11th place in the first (A) round of the national team races in Park City, Utah, this weekend, which landed her a spot on the National Development squad. She finished in 17th last year.
The Sport
The idea behind the sport itself seems simple enough – think bobsleigh or luge.
Get on and ride, right?
“I’ll try to [visualize] the track, the curves,” Magnuson said. “It takes everything you’ve got.”
When signaled, competitors (called sliders) push out their stripped one-person sleds in a sprint, dive on it and descend, using their shoulders, knees and toes for stability amid curves and oscillations.
Occasionally, sliders slide right off their sleds (they call that “81-ing”); ice and speed don’t mix well sometimes.
“If you don’t take some curves right, it could be trouble,” Magnuson said. “I’ve been bruised and battered from curve six in Park City.”
On the track in Calgary, she once flipped on curve eight.
“I thought my exit was fine, but I was a little high and I came out on my shoulder and flipped over on my back,” Magnuson said. “What you do is take your opposite shoulder and fling it back over.”
Magnuson didn’t ditch the toboggan after her mishap.
“At the beginning of each season you are like, ‘Why do I do this again?’” she said. “But as soon as you hop on your sled you aren’t cold anymore, and you aren’t nervous.”
Her improvement in the sport has spawned goals. Magnuson wants to compete at St. Moritz in Switzerland and Winterberg in Germany.
Recently, the U.S. women’s team took first in the 2007 Skeleton World Cup, edging out Canada by 38 points. Magnuson was in Park City during one of the cup’s meets, only she was making sure VIP guests at the venue didn’t run out of shrimp or wine.
Next time, Magnuson wants to do the serving on the track.
Magnuson plans on suiting up for two races in the Europa and America’s Cup next season. By 2010, she hopes she’s competing in the Olympics in Vancouver, British Columbia.
“I’m not sure how real of a goal it is, but it’s a goal,” Magnuson said. “Maybe by 2014.”
After all that, she might just retire from the sport.
If she does, she’ll just move on to another.
Magnuson played soccer, basketball and softball at Concordia University in California. While attending NCC, she participated in softball and helped start a club basketball team.
In fact, she’s tried to take up at least one new sport every year.
Magnuson played professional rugby for the Seattle Breakers last summer. She searched Craigslist when she moved to San Diego, where she currently lives, to find recreational basketball and soccer teams.
And this weekend, she and her football team, the SoCal Scorpions, have got an AFC Championship game in New York to play in – Magnuson is a second-string wide receiver in the Women’s Professional Football League.
If all goes as planned, her football team will be playing in the PFL championship game at La Jolla High School on Dec. 1, and she’ll be wearing gold by 2014.
“That would be nice,” Magnuson said.
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