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.

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.