"Head first" isn't a choice for Kendall Wesenberg. It's a job requirement.
The skeleton slider has also turned it into her life mantra. And her grit to push through life and it's challenges is becoming legendary.
The 2018 Olympian is working toward qualifying for her second Olympic Team. But she's already put in a gold medal worthy effort just trying to qualify for the 2026 Winter Games.
Kendall grew up in Modesto, California, playing a variety of sports. She graduated from CU-Boulder and in 2010 watched the sport of skeleton for the first time during the Vancouver Olympics. She thought, "I wonder if I could do that?"
She attended a sliding athletes combine and discovered she had an irrational need for speed and the innate talent to get good at one of the most niche Olympic sport.
Skeleton athletes slide head first on their stomachs down the same icy track the bobsleds go down.
Athletes use their shoulder sand knees to steer.
Kendall explains, "There are anywhere from 12 to 20-something curves that you try and cover in about a minute, usually less."
She's gone as fast at 86 miles per hour on a track. And, she competed in the 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Olympics.
But she failed to make the 2022 Olympic Team. It turns out she had an undiagnosed spinal injury that had gone untreated for three years. It explained the immense pain she'd experienced training and competing.
"The things that hold your spine in place snapped off of my back. And when it didn't get diagnosed, my vertebrae just slid out of my spinal column. So it was like fully pinching my nerves. I couldn't feel my legs," says Kendall.
Her surgeon recommended a spinal fusion, a surgery with a very long recovery.
Kendall jokes, "The playbook's pretty thin on a return to sport post spine fusion."
But her doctor didn't close the door on a return to the sport she loved. Kendall spent three months in a back brace, seven months barely walking and couldn't start serious physical therapy until 10 months post surgery.
600 days later she returned to the ice describing her return to a track as "awesome."
A year later, she's earned a spot on the U.S. World Cup Skeleton Team and she's actively trying to qualify for that second Olympic Team.
