DETERMINED TO BEAT LONG ODDS
Mexico’s Schleske, 39, takes up cross country skiing with eye on being Olympian
Chaucer wrote that time and tide wait for no man. But he didn’t say anything about women, and that’s a loophole Karla Schleske believes is big enough to accommodate her dream of skiing in the Winter Olympics.
It won’t happen this year. Schleske hit her head while taking a spill in her final qualifying race for the Beijing Games earlier this month. But she’s convinced her dream has only been delayed, not denied. Time, she says, will wait for her.
“This is not over,” she promised. “I will focus on the next one. And for sure there are future Cups and world championships.”
Schleske is an uncommon Winter Olympic hopeful, and not just because she took up skiing last February, a year before the Beijing Games were scheduled to open. There’s also her age — at 39, she’s 12 years older than the average Olympic medalist in cross country skiing.
Then there’s the fact that skiing is her second-best sport. Eighth best, really, when you consider she was a two-time Mexican champion and national record-holder in the seven-event heptathlon. However, her best score, posted when she won her second consecutive national title in 2011, was 694 points shy of the Olympic qualifying standard for the 2012 London Games.
In a 15-year career, she never got closer. So after a terrifying epileptic seizure in 2019 caused her to lose consciousness, she gave up track and field and her quest to reach the Summer Games and decided to give the Winter Games a try instead.
“I went to the doctor and I talked to him about this crazy goal that I want to be an Olympian. So I