San Diego couple survive the ‘Wipeout’ challenge
“Want to see me get shot out of a cannon on ‘Wipeout’?”
That intriguing question was posed the other day by San Diegan Kaitlyn Kassis on her Instagram account to more than 57,000 followers.
She and partner Connor Nellans were appearing on the April 15 episode of the obstacle course competition that was resurrected on TBS for a new season that began April 1.
“Will we make it past the big red balls? Will we win $25,000?” she asked. The answers? Yes and yes.
Kaitlyn, whose family lives in Carlsbad, met Connor, who moved to San Diego three years ago from Minnesota, when they were CrossFit training and coaching. They began dating about 18 months ago.
Both have competed in the CrossFit Games international championship. Connor, a dual citizen of the United States and Luxembourg, earned the tiny European nation’s title of the Fittest in Luxembourg. Kaitlyn’s San Diego-based team took second place in the world during the 2018 CrossFit competition.
Since “Wipeout” competitors get no practice runs on the water obstacle course packed with spinning, twirling, bouncing, punching and seesawing challenges threatening to plunge them into the drink, they prepared by surfing, especially off Torrey Pines State Beach.
Wiping out, which Kaitlyn says they both do a lot when surfing, was great practice for the show. So was paddling out.
CrossFit training, which incorporates weightlifting, gymnastics, cycling, swimming and other sports, also was excellent preparation. It introduces the element of surprise because, in competitions, participants don’t know in advance what sport they will be asked to do so.
After being canceled on ABC TV seven years ago, “Wipeout” was revived this year on TBS, with past WWE wrestler John Cena, who once lived in San Diego, joining comedian Nicole Byer as co-host. When Con
ability of any forensic test results conducted on that evidence,” wrote defense lawyer Paula Mitchell, also the executive director of the law school’s innocence project.
The District Attorney’s Office has vigorously protected the conviction, as new information on the quality of the evidence found by the innocence
project attorneys has come forward. Tanya Sierra, a public affairs officer for the district attorney, declined to comment on the new filings because the case is ongoing, but said, “we trust the court system to deliver justice on behalf of the victim.”
Dorotik was convicted in June 2001 for the murder of her husband and sentenced to 25 years to life in prison. Bob Dorotik was reported missing by Jane Dorotik on
the evening of Feb. 13, 2000. She told authorities that the last time she saw him was earlier that day as he prepared to go running. She was arrested two days later. His body was found near a road. He had been beaten and strangled.
At the time, Jane Dorotik was a successful high-level executive for a mental health services company who also raised and trained horses at the family’s Valley
Center ranch. She has long insisted she is innocent.
The evidence against her at trial included blood found in the master bedroom and a syringe that prosecutors argued had Jane Dorotik’s fingerprint on it along with smudge of her husband’s blood.
The conviction was upheld on appeal. Then in 2015, Loyola Law School lawyers, who had begun re-examining the case, won a court ruling
allowing new DNA testing on evidence in the case — her husband’s clothing, DNA from a rope he was strangled with, and scrapings from beneath his fingernails.
The results excluded Jane Dorotik as a possible contributor. Then in October 2019 a judge ordered a new hearing in Dorotik’s case, concluding that the defense lawyers had shown “much of the forensic, DNA and blood evidence presented against her at trial was false.”
Last July, prosecutors dropped opposition to a new trial for Dorotik based on the DNA evidence. That effectively wiped out the conviction, but the District Attorney’s Office said it would continue to prosecute the case.
In April, Dorotik was released from prison because of the COVID-19 pandemic.