Collinsville native to compete in Milan’s Winter Olympics

It’s unlikely for a warm weather island like Puerto Rico to send an athlete to the Winter Olympic Games. It’s even more unlikely for that person to have grown up just 10 minutes down the road in Collinsville.

Yet, here we are.

At 38-years old, Kellie Delka is set to make her second appearance in the Winter Olympics next week in Milan, Italy. She will compete in skeleton, a sport in which the competitor rides head-first and prone on a flat sled on an ice track. She is the only athlete representing Puerto Rico.

In her first Olympics four years ago in Beijing, Delka was one of just two athletes from the island and had to overcome COVID limitations. This time, she says she’s in the best shape of her career and is eager to bring Puerto Rico its first Winter Olympic medal.

“I’ve had a lot more media on the island, which is exciting, so a little bit more people know about me,” Delka said. “I hope that they’re really fired up and ready to cheer me on because I really think I can do really good races this year.”

But how could a Texas girl, who was a former cheerleader and pole vaulter, even consider the sport of skeleton and end up doing it for Puerto Rico?

“I would say the sport kind of found me in a way, because I didn’t really seek it out,” Delka said.

While studying at the University of North Texas, Delka came across a Facebook post about bobsled from a former UNT football player and Olympic bobsledder, Johnny Quinn. She reached out, intrigued, and wound up going to a tryout.

She eventually chose the skeleton route because of her size. Fifteen years later, it’s become the calling she didn’t know she needed.

“There’s nothing else like standing on top of the hill and the track’s clear for only me,” she said. “It’s just a feeling that you’ll never really find anywhere else in the world.”

There may be nothing else like training for skeleton, either.

On the surface, the art of skeleton is throwing yourself headfirst onto a tiny sled and racing 80+ miles per hour downhill on an ice track. The key is harnessing speed and power, but the majority of preparation actually comes between the ears, largely because the body wouldn’t stand the test of physics.

“It actually takes a pretty big toll on your central nervous system, and you can really only take about two to three runs a day,” Delka said. “And you can’t do that every single day.

“I’m really only on ice a total of maybe 10 to 15 minutes a week, which is crazy to think about, and everything else is doing video review or watching POV.”

Because it’s often too warm to slide in the summer months, Delka spends much of her offseason training on the track, in the gym and even underwater. She’s off the sled for six or seven months at a time. That’s why sliders are typically older athletes, because it takes time to pile enough reps for mastery and to marry the mind to the body.

“Year after year, it’s a lot of muscle memory,” Delka said. “It’s crazy to think [of] the things that I have memorized in my head, like the tracks and everything. But it just becomes second nature over time.”

Eventually, Delka’s talents steered her to Puerto Rico in 2018 after hearing that the island was seeking to grow its winter sports federation.

Most people barely acknowledge Puerto Rico’s association with winter sports, but not Delka. She saw the U.S. territory as an opportunity to control her own destiny. She saw the big picture, too, being that her presence in skeleton could inspire young Puerto Ricans to do the same.

“I want there to be more doors open for these kids in the future, to be like, ‘You don’t have to just play summer sports living on an island, there’s so many more options available,’” Delka said. “And I think these little kids watching from the island or from anywhere in the Caribbean will be like, ‘Wow, if she can do it, I can do it.’”

Not that Delka has a lot of resources to support her dream. In fact, she knew she was ceding many of them by leaving the States. And in a sport where athletes are so reliant on self-funding and sponsorships, she inherently put herself at a disadvantage.

But to Delka, you don’t have to have “all the bells and whistles” to make it.

“You should never count yourself out, because believing in yourself and just grinding and believing that you can do it, I think you’ll be surprised at how far that can take you.” Delka said.

She wanted it the hard way. Now, Delka hopes to inspire others — who don’t have a choice — to do the same.

“I hope in the future that I can mentor kids on the island and help them make that dream come true for them,” she said.

With the Winter Games just days away, and Delka set to bear the flag for Puerto Rico at the opening ceremony for a second time, her North Texas roots remain close to her heart.

The 2006 graduate of Collinsville High School will be a representative of not just Puerto Rico, but of the entire region that laid the groundwork for her dream coming true.

“I feel like I’ve proven that, now, going into my second time, it’s like, ‘I can do this — and so can you.’”