Follow Winter Olympic SportsPersonalize Your Feed
This wasn’t the Olympic build-up Joe Cecchini envisioned.
The Canadian skeleton coach and 2018 Italian Olympian was preparing to gear up for a convergence of his worlds at Milano Cortina 2026.
Then, allegations surfaced that he manipulated a race on the developmental circuit to ensure Canada’s spots at the Olympics, ultimately preventing American Katie Uhlaender from competing in a record sixth Games.
“On me personally, this has been horrible. I never expected a decision like this within the ruleset at a development circuit to cause such a scenario,” Cecchini told CBC Sports in an exclusive interview on Thursday.
“I feel really bad for the athletes in trying to understand why people are so potentially angry. There’s a voice from an athlete who’s been in multiple Olympics and is carrying a certain clout. And it’s been really hard and it has challenged myself, my staff.”
The IBSF, skeleton’s international governing body, found no wrongdoing on Cecchini’s part after four Canadian athletes withdrew from a competition in January in Lake Placid, N.Y., which affected the points available at the race. The International Olympic Committee denied Uhlaender a wild-card spot upon appeal.
An independent tribunal dismissed Uhlaender’s complaint on Wednesday, while noting “that the action of the Canadians was intentional and directed to reducing the points available to athletes who slid at the final Lake Placid [North American Cup].”
On Friday, Uhlaender filed an appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport, claiming she was unfairly prevented from earning her Olympic spot.
Bobsleigh Canada Skeleton is defending a decision to remove four athletes from a competition after a coach was accused of intentionally sabotaging an American athlete trying to reach her sixth Olympics.
The appeal also found that the withdrawals ultimately did not affect the number of quota spots each country received into the Olympics. Uhlaender, however, missed out on points that could have nudged her ahead of American teammate Mystique Ro in the worldwide standings. The U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee ultimately decides which two athletes will fill its allocations.
Cecchini said he’s known Uhlaender for 20 years through skeleton, with her career pre-dating his. He said they would often check in on each other, and that he was surprised by her reaction.
“I totally can understand how skeleton is a huge part of her life as it is mine. And so I can see how she can be upset and disappointed,” Cecchini said.
“But being disappointed and upset with the decision of another nation, or expecting another nation to go to do something extra for you so that you can have a certain performance, I don’t think it is fair to put that onto another nation and to be so disappointed in a decision that someone does to take it as personally as she has.”
After Uhlaender learned of the withdrawals, Cecchini said she sent him around 40 text messages.
Because of their prior relationship, he said, they had a conversation, where he explained his thought process. Audio of that phone call was later leaked, including Cecchini allegedly saying “I can just eliminate any possibilities here,” regarding the potential for Canada to lose a quota spot.
Through her appeals process, Uhlaender has maintained she is seeking fairness.
“I am only asking the IOC to be fair. Doing so would protect the integrity of competition and prevent further harm. Such action would send a powerful message to young athletes everywhere: that standing up for ethics and integrity may be difficult, but it matters,” she said.
Standing up for the values we all believe in… If I could speak with JD Vance, I would ask if he would stand with me, the US Olympic Committee, and many other nations in asking IOC President Kristy Coventry to use her power to stand up for fairness in Olympic sports by creating a…
‘She wasn’t a top-tier athlete’
Cecchini said his mind wasn’t on how the withdrawals might affect Uhlaender when the decision to withdraw was made.
“I don’t really wanna speak negatively about Katie, but Katie was not on the World Cup team. She wasn’t a top-tier athlete in that program anymore. She was at the end of her career. I would personally would rather race against Katie. She’s not as competitive as the other athletes,” he said.
“It’s probably really unfair to say and not really where I want to go with this but that’s where we are with that.”
Uhlaender, 41, won two world-championship gold medals in 2012. She has not reached the podium at a major event since, and did not win an Olympic medal in any of her five appearances, though she made the final each time.
The 31-year-old Ro, meanwhile, is coming off an individual silver medal at 2025 worlds while also being part of the team event that won gold.
Cecchini accused Uhlaender of using similar manipulation tactics to earn enough qualifying points herself, including withdrawing from races where the field wasn’t large enough or “recruiting” more athletes to compete in North American Cup races alongside her.
Uhlaender was listed as “did not start” at a pair of North American Cup races in November.
“It’s a different side of the same coin. And this is all within the rules. There’s nothing wrong with those things. And people can be strategic in the races that they participate. And she was doing that, and other nations were doing that, because you want to put your best foot forward,” he said.
CBC Sports has reached out to USA Bobsled-Skeleton for comment regarding Cecchini accusation.
Call for change
In a statement shortly after allegations were initially made earlier in January, Bobsleigh Canada Skeleton said it withdrew the four athletes after they experienced “a particularly challenging week on the track” in the race prior.
Cecchini did not add further context to the decision: “There’s multiple factors and we haven’t strayed from what that was,” he said.
The Canadian coach did, however, call for change to the Olympic qualification system.
“I do not think that the development circuits should be a pathway to the Olympics,” he said. “I believe that the best sliders in the world are sliding on the World Cup. And that is where someone should be qualifying for. Not through a calculator, jumping on development circuits that have the most people participating versus the highest quality of participants.”
Cecchini noted his belief that the IBSF was already looking into a possible alterations to Olympic pathways.
“There’s definitely some system changes that need to happen within the IBSF that I know they’re going to be working on because this just showed that there was a disconnect in expectations of different circuits of different people,” he said.
“This is a system flaw, if anything. But we were within the rules.”
Similarly to Uhlaender, Cecchini himself narrowly missed out on Olympic qualification in 2014.
“You learn from these experiences and you make sure that you’re on top of those competitive landscapes so you’re making the right decision for your athletes. And it’s the same across for every nation. So that’s what happened to me. It wasn’t like a tragic tale or anything,” he said.
Meanwhile, his athletes, including former world champion Hallie Clarke and veteran Jane Channell, must maintain their focus on the task at hand for .
“This has affected our preparation for sure, right? I’m spending time talking to reporters and there’s things going on at work. We never know, like each day there’s like a new thing and accusation,” he said.
“But the team is pretty solid. We’ve worked hard at being together. … The Olympic environment is a really stressful environment. And this is just an additional challenge that we have to work through and it’s unfortunate. I wish that this didn’t happen for them. And I’m really sorry that they have to go through that.”
