From Beijing, CHN
(January 29, 2022) – The United States’ Megan Henry has petitioned the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) to allow her to compete in the 2022 Olympic skeleton program.
The United States qualified two sleds into the Olympics, and Henry was the odd-woman out after being out-scored over the season by teammate Kelly Curtis by 12 points. That left Henry out of the Olympic games.
As the Olympic quota places were allocated, the final spot in the field was to go to Agathe Bessard of France. France declined to send Bessard, which then gave the spot to Leslie Stratton of Sweden. Like France with Bessard, Sweden declined to send Stratton. Per the version of the Olympic qualifying standards published in September of 2021, that left one unallocated place in the women’s skeleton field because Olympic spots were only for the top 45 in the IBSF Women’s Skeleton ranking at the end of the season.
The first woman on the other side of that top 45 was the US Virgin Islands’ Katie Tannenbaum, who was 47th.
Given that the field was not full, the IBSF and IOC issued the fourth version of the qualification standards (version 1.4, issued Jan. 24, 2022) that took away that ranking standard, and thus allowed Tannenbaum to take the final skeleton spot.
Henry’s argument is that in a previous version of the qualifying standards (version 1.1, issued March 20, 2020) if the field was not full after going through the top 45 athletes, the next spot in the field would go to the top-ranked woman of a nation who did not qualify three sleds. In this case that would be Henry.
Henry’s petition to CAS asks that Henry be given the final spot in the Olympic field in place of Tannenbaum.
CAS will hold its hearing on January 30, 2022 and issue a decision that same day.
Note: This story will be updated if new information becomes available.
