Jinxed Skeleton

I'm going to be very careful if I have to cover the skeleton competition in Turin.

What a difference four years can make.

At the 2002 Salt Lake Olympics, the U.S. skeleton team was one of the best stories to cover. Jimmy Shea had a magical time, winning a gold medal while competing with a photo in his helmet of his grandfather, Jim Shea, a 1932 Olympic double-gold medalist who had died a month earlier in a car accident.

Captivating Tristan Gale also won a gold medal for the U.S. in the women's skeleton.

Four years later, though, and it seems that the U.S. skeleton team is cursed.

Neither Shea nor Gale even qualified for this year's team.

Leading women's contender Noelle Pikus-Pace broke her leg after she was hit by an out-of-control sled.

Leading men's contender Zach Lund was suspended for taking a banned substance, then was reinstated after he argued he didn't know the substance was in the hair-loss drug he had been taking since 1999.

Coach Tom Nardiello was suspended for alleged sexual harassment. An arbitrator ruled the charges couldn't be substantiated, but the U.S. Olympic Committee said Nardiello had violated ethics rules and told him to stay away from Turin.

Given this string of luck, don't be surprised if you hear that the skeleton team gets nailed by food poisoning in Italy or that their sleds were accidently sent to Iceland.