Career
Pikus-Pace won the women's Skeleton World Cup overall title in 2004-05.
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. Her medal ambitions would be dashed on October 19, 2005 at the Canada Olympic Park bobsleigh, luge, and skeleton track in Calgary when her right leg was broken by a four-man bobsleigh that failed to brake at 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 team members. Pikus-Pace underwent surgery to repair her broken leg, which included an insertion of a titanium rod into her 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 in Turin. This story was told in the critically acclaimed documentary 114 Days: The Race to Save a Dream. The US Bobsleigh and Skeleton Federation petitioned to both the FIBT and the IOC to include Pikus-Pace in the women's skeleton competition, but to no avail. The only American representative in women's skeleton was Katie Uhlaender who finished sixth.
Pikus-Pace, who at the time was six weeks pregnant, announced on October 3, 2007 that she would take the 2007-08 Skeleton World Cup off to give birth to her baby.
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 two of her other sleds had been damaged. The first sled had been damaged by the runaway bobsled in Calgary and her second sled was damaged during transport to the FIBT World Championships 2009 in Lake Placid, New York. Picus-Pace's husband, a project manager of a metal fabrication company in Salt Lake City, Utah, designed a skeleton sled in accordance to FIBT regulations to allow her to race.
Read more about this topic: Noelle Pikus-Pace
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