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Hollingsworth finishes fifth

For Canada’s greatest medal hope in Olympic skeleton, it was a nightmarish case of deja vu that left Mellisa Hollingsworth crying on the finish dock.
Mellisa Hollingsworth
Canada's Mellisa Hollingsworth finished a disappointing fifth in women's skeleton at the Whistler Sliding Centre at the 2010 Vancouver Olympic Winter Games in Whistler

WHISTLER, B.C. — For Canada’s greatest medal hope in Olympic skeleton, it was a nightmarish case of deja vu that left Mellisa Hollingsworth crying on the finish dock.

“It is just really hard,” Hollingsworth said as she stood in the crisp air at the Whistler Sliding Centre, tears staining her cheeks. “I feel like I have let my entire country down.”

One of the faces of the Canadian Olympic team, the 29-year-old from Eckville entered the skeleton competition at the Vancouver Games as the top-ranked slider. Her fifth-place finish on Friday was considered a massive disappointment.

“It could have happened anywhere, at a World Cup, but it happened at the Olympic Games,” she said.

She was the closest thing Canada had to a lock in the sliding sports at the Vancouver Games.

But over four heats she ran into Amy Williams — a British slider who came not from nowhere, but pretty close to it, and one who could slide like the wind on the Whistler track.

The 27-year-old from Cambridge, the silver medal winner at Whistler in last February’s Olympic test event, led the 19-sled field after every heat, smashing track records along the way, to win gold.

She even overcame controversy. After the third run, the American team said her helmet, with the Union Jack painted on top, was illegal because it had vents in the back. Race officials dismissed it.

An hour after the event ended Friday, the Canadians also protested the helmet, asking for her to disqualified. Don Krone of the International Bobsleigh Federation said the request was verbally rejected but added that officials will still sit down and examine Canada’s complaint.

Williams wasn’t fazed by the controversy.

“It’s just brilliant. I’m in a little bubble. It hasn’t quite sunk in yet,” said Williams.

“I never got a gold medal ever and to have done it on my first Olympics. That’s why I can’t quite believe it.”

Williams finished with a four-run combined time of three minutes 35.64 seconds and posted a top average speed of 143.3 km/h. She knifed down the track in 53.68 seconds in her third run to smash a track record she herself had set a night earlier.

German slider Kerstin Szymkowiak took silver, 56-hundredths of a second behind. Teammate Anja Huber was third, 72-hundredths of a second back. The two captured Germany’s first-ever Olympic skeleton medals.

But in the world of skeleton, where winners and losers are often separated by the blink of an eye, it was a rout.

American Noelle Pikus-Pace was fourth and Hollingsworth was fifth, 96-hundredths of a second back.

Amy Gough of Abbotsford, B.C., finished seventh while Michelle Kelly of Fort St. John, B.C. was 13th.

It was a historical setback for Hollingsworth after she won bronze at Turin in 2006.

It was Hollingsworth’s race to lose when they began the first two of four heats Thursday as temperatures hovered around zero, with no wind and a crescent moon.

She was fighting a repeat of history. Four years ago in Turin, she came in as the No. 1, but tanked her last heat and finished third.

As the No. 1 slider again, she was the first competitor down Blackcomb mountain, through 16 turns and 1,450 metres. She was jittery, tentative, dragging her feet a bit down the course to end up fifth.

On her second run, things got worse. As she ran down the course and hopped stomach down into her sled, the runner hit a crevice in the ice and veered off course. She slammed into the wall sapping all the momentum from her push. Still, she drove like a demon and jumped up to third for Friday’s third and fourth runs.

In her third run, she was possessed, ripping down the course on her sled, nicknamed White Lightning, to stand in second, a half-second back of Williams with one run to go.

But in the fourth run it all came apart.

A half-second is an eternity in skeleton. She needed the ride of her life and Williams to mess up.

Down she went through the upper labyrinth as Canadian fans shouted, waved flags and clanged their cow bells.

She gained a precious second through the first interval.

But as she prepared to enter the lower part of the course, the super-speedway, her body hit the wall and bounced through the corners like a pinball, her body starting to fishtail.

She regained control, but like an airplane that had taken a flak hit in the engine, she sailed down but was bleeding speed.

By the time she roared up the out run and slammed into the wall of foam used to break the sliders’ momentum, she just lay there for a few seconds on her stomach as fans cheered.

Slowly she got up, took off her helmet, the one with the horse skull on it (an amalgamation of skeleton and her love of horses), forced a wan smile to the fans 11 deep at the start line, half-heartedly waved a Canadian flag, hugged the provisional winners and blended into the field of winter coats on the start dock.

She was fourth. When Williams came hellfire up the outrun two minutes later, fists pumping, to win gold, Hollinsgworth slipped to fifth.

Szymkowiak, the 32-year-old “Ice Tiger” from Mainz, came to Vancouver on a roll, with five podium finishes in her last five World Cup races, and kept on rolling.

She was third in the first heat, and won the second, faded on the Friday but hung on.

“I thought could do it. I showed it in all the World Cups,” she said.

Huber was eighth in Turin in 2006, but in the last two years had become the most popular slider in the emergency ward.

The 26-year-old Berchtesgaden slider with the trademark gold helmet struggled with an elbow injury in the 2008-09 season and this year, after winning the opening race in Park City, went on the disabled list to rehab an ankle injury.

When she returned, she bounced up and down the standings, but won gold in Igls, Austria to end the season.

Her injury seems healed. When her name was called to the podium, she swung her arms back and leapt up onto it like a long jumper, raised her arms over her head and beamed a smile that stretched from the Rhine to the Oder.

Gough finished second in her first run, but couldn’t match it in the following heats. Her seventh-place finish was a triumph for the 32-year-old from Abbotsford, B.C. It was her first season on the World Cup in three years and she was ranked ninth in the standings.

She brushed past reporters on the finish dock.

Among the Canadians, Kelly seemed to be the most at peace with the standings. Going into the race, the 35-year-old said given the season she endured, she just wanted to make four good runs and do her best.

Kelly, a 10th-place finisher in Salt Lake in 2002, was kicked off the World Cup team last fall for allegedly doctoring her sled runners to make them faster. The case was tossed out on a technicality but the allegations dogged her all season.

“For sure I’m very disappointed for Mellisa,” said Kelly. “I think we all expected as Canadians to come out here and look for the podium sweep and having the best day we could.

“We throw our hearts into this. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn’t. At the of the day that’s all we have.”