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Firefighter blazes own path on skeleton
Courage, guts come in handy in sports, too
By Joe Bauman
Deseret News staff writer
Blasting down an ice track on a sled the size of a garbage-can lid demands cool-headed physical courage. But sometimes bravery of another kind is required, too — the bravery to face pain, conflicting demands and even defeat and still keep trying.
Both types of courage are fully developed in the character of Lea Ann Parsley, a firefighter from Granville, Ohio.
Skeleton is a sport designed to get the heart thumping. That's partly why athletes do it — for the adrenaline rush that comes with a flawless performance at 80 miles per hour, face inches off the polished ice, the sled reaching only from shoulders to hips.
Obviously fighting fires has a high adrenaline quotient, too.
Parsley battled a wildfire in Oregon in which 300-foot trees were "falling left and right," she said. A couple of times she and other firefighters jumped out of the way with only minutes or seconds to spare as gigantic trees crashed. Finally fire bosses had to pull the crew out, "and we spent the afternoon watching these things come down."
In 1999, she earned the Ohio Firefighter of the Year award for saving a teenage girl and her mother. (For Parsley's account of the rescue, see the accompanying story.)
But Parsley also glows with the quiet courage needed to keep trying.
At the end of the 2000-01 skeleton season, she had just come in seventh in the final World Cup race of the season at Utah Olympic Park. She was stiff and sore and thinking about giving up competitive racing.
Her neck hurt, and she worried that she might have injured a vertebral disk.
"The G forces that we experience here are unreal, and the slamming of your head in some of these curves is unreal," she said.
Because of the neck injury, Parsley could not hold her head up and let the helmet chin rest on the ice. Instead, she had been flashing down the track with the helmet forehead against the ice.
"I'm dragging up here," she said, showing the spot on her dark helmet where friction with the track's ice had worn off the finish. "Had to take a black marker and mark on my helmet."
She needed to get back to her Ph.D. work, needed to return to her job. She was thinking about ending her competitive career.
But somehow, she found the will to keep on going.
She entered the six races in the skeleton trials for the women's World Cup team. She finished with three gold medals, took one silver and a bronze. In the last race, she set a track record for Lake Placid.
At the end of the World Cup season, she fought for a place on the U.S. Olympic team. Under international rules, the number of team members depends on the country's standing in World Cup events.
The American women were likely to have only one spot. In four races, Parsley battled with Salt Lake skeleton sensation Tristan Gale for that spot. Gale won, Parsley was second. So Gale was on the team.
Again, Parsley didn't quit. She still had one chance. If the U.S. women could pull off a stunning upset in the final World Cup race of the season, the country would have two spots in the Olympics, and the second would go to Parsley.
It was a formidable challenge. The American women had to defeat the powerhouse Swiss team at St. Moritz — its home track. Worse, none of the three Americans — Gale, Park City's Tricia Stumpf and Parsley — had ever raced there.
On Jan. 17, Michelle Kelly, a Canadian slider, won by one-hundredth of a second. Parsley took the silver.
That sterling result, combined with Stumpf's sixth place and Gale's 10th, allowed the American women to better the Swiss in overall World Cup points. Canada was ranked first, the United States and Germany tied for second, and Switzerland dropped to fourth.
Parsley had earned a spot on the Olympic team — the hard way.
E-mail: bau@desnews.com
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February 14, 2002
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