Slide It In

"I'd be in the start house, and guys would come up to me wanting to know about their plane tickets," says the 6-foot-1, 180-pound Ellis, who ran track at Stephen F. Austin. "Not only was I racing, but I was dealing with budgets, equipment, travel details, all kinds of things."

Eventually, he scrapped that part of his involvement and focused on racing. That's when he really started to improve, working his way from one of the hopefuls to the elite. He started shaving time here and there and everywhere, and before he knew it, there were only five others in the world better.

But here's the bummer: Even though he's the youngest member of the skeleton team (which finished second overall in the World Cup last year), nothing is guaranteed. Only three Americans will compete in the 2006 Olympics, and there are a lot of people behind him who would like a spot.

"We have to make the team every year," says Ellis, who until recently hadn't experienced one of those Wide World of Sports crashes that leaves viewers recoiling from their TV sets. He says that helped him get better, that he walked away from it knowing he could go faster. The rest of us would have just walked away--for good. "Just because you're one of the best this year doesn't guarantee you a spot next year. I would like to make the Olympics, yeah, but I'm not sure that's the biggest motivation for me. I would like to be the best American. But you have to have your own motivation. I wonder about that sometimes. Because you get cuts and bruising on your shoulders, and you get ice burns. And we don't get much exposure, and the travel, even though we go to Europe for two months at a time, it can be hard. So sometimes I wonder how much longer I'll do it. But I'm such a competitive person that when I get down the hill...I don't know. There's just something about it--I want to go right back up to the top."