Kelly Curtis: USA's first Black Olympic skeleton racer sliding for greater diversity

Kelly Curtis is breaking the ice for Black athletes in skeleton at the Beijing 2022 Olympic Winter Games.

Flying face down on the ice at 120km/h is all in a day's work for the U.S. airwoman, and she wants to be an example for future Black Olympic hopefuls.

Curtis was not especially interested in winter sports when she was growing up in Princeton, New Jersey.

Athletics was her first love with basketball her winter sport.

“I didn't really see too many people that look like me or had a similar background,” Curtis told Team USA of watching winter sports as a child.

Hating the cold didn't help either.

“I was always too scared to do it. I didn’t really feel like I had what it took, and I also did not like the cold,” she told the Air Force Times.

“So it just never seemed like a door that would be open.”

Sometimes you have to kick the door open and be first, and that's what Curtis has done.

She may be ranked 14th in the world ahead of Beijing but this is about much more than medals and placement - she's out to represent and give young Black children someone to look up to in sliding sports, like Elana Meyers Taylor in bobsleigh and Maame Biney in short track speed skating.

Kelly Curtis: college track star and bobsledder after Dad played NFL

The sporting pedigree in the family is in no doubt - father John Curtis played in the NFL and Kelly stood out in track and field and basketball from a young age.

Competing in heptathlon at Springfield University, where Dad made a name for himself in American football, her proudest moment is winning The Penn Relays - the oldest and largest track and field competition in the United States.

A strength and conditioning coach at Springfield College, Dr. Daniel Jaffe, suggested she try sliding which she first took as a joke, but reconsidered when she did her Masters.

“When I found myself in grad school in upstate New York, I was already in the cold, so I was like, ‘If I’m going to be up here, I might as well be doing something fun,'" she told the Air Force Times.

She got into a drivers' program at the Olympic Sliding Center in Lake Placid and saw the skeleton riders whoosh past. She had to give it a try.

“I saw how much more fun they were having on a skeleton sled,” she continues to Team USA. She tried it and absolutely loved it.

Kelly Curtis: Skeleton struggles

And the cold? She got over it.

Starting a new sport in your mid-20s isn't easy but Curtis is a fast learner.

Regional, then national wins brought her to the big leagues of the World Cup and she slowly built her game, learning the technical aspects and taking something from each race.

The sporting and technical learning is one side, the financial and support side is another with sliding an expensive sport.

“When we travel for our season, we are away from our homes October through April, so finding a steady source of income has always been a struggle,” Curtis said in a September 2020 press release.

“I’ve had situations where I’ve had to decide between another training run or eating dinner that night.”

Her brother Jimmy had gone through an Air Force program and when she saw an opportunity on the Air Force World Class Athlete Program as a civilian, she grabbed it.

Completing basic training remotely, her first job was stationed in Italy as part of the knowledge operations team although she has spent much more time preparing for Beijing.

She had her best result this season just a four weeks before Beijing when she came sixth in the World Cup at St. Moritz, Switzerland.

While a medal might be beyond her, her main goal is to inspire a new generation of Black sliders.

When can I watch Kelly Curtis at the Beijing 2022 Olympic Winter Games?

at the Yanqing National Sliding Centre

Friday 11 February

Women Skeleton Heat 1 9:30am

Women Skeleton Heat 2 11am

Saturday 12 February

Women Skeleton Heat 3 20:20

Women Skeleton Heat 4 21:55