Go for the Goal – Noelle Pikus-Pace

The 2014 Olympic winter Games open in Sochi, Russia on February 7, 2014.  Exactly one month later, following the 17 days of initial competition, the 2014 Paralympic Winter Games open for 10 days.  What better time to use Mainstay’s Go for the Goal sermon series.  As support material for our Go for the Goal series, we continue our series of stories that spotlight Winter Olympians whose goal is to honor Jesus Christ.

American Olympic hopeful, Noelle Pikus-Pace appears to be on track to win a medal at the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympic games. This is not Noelle’s first Olympics. She finished fourth in the skeleton competition in Vancouver in 2010. She left the sport after Vancouver to give birth to and begin raising her second child. She has returned and is blazing a trail of glory down the slopes on the World Cup tour as she prepares for Sochi.

During the first race of 2014 Noelle was tied for the lead at the end of her first run. But, in hopes of gaining speed, she made a strategic adjustment that ended up costing her less than six-tenths of a second, putting her on the podium, but in second-place. This race at Winterberg, Germany, is the fourth time in a row that she has finished second on the World Cup circuit this winter. Her finish also propelled her from fourth place to second in the overall standings. Given the margin that would be needed to gain first place at this point in the overall standings, it is not likely that she should be expected to win the World Cup this year. However, she did win the 2005 World Cup, becoming the first U.S. female skeleton athlete to ever achieve that goal. 

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