There’s a certain badassery built into a sport that entails hurtling headfirst on a tiny sled down a twisty track at speeds of up to 90 miles per hour.
But Ro, the first American to medal in skeleton in 12 years at the IBSF World Championships in 2025, admittedly didn’t think it was for her at first.
“The coach walks me to the line, lets me go, and all of a sudden, it’s going so fast, you cannot see anything, you cannot process anything,” she told The Athletic in December, recalling her first taste of the sport in 2016 after being told she was too small for bobsledding. “I get to the bottom, and it’s like, ‘I’m done, bye! I’m not doing that s–t again!’”
But after listening to enough people rave about how cool it was, she tried it again.
A decade later, the Virginia native is in her first Olympics, ready to compete individually and in the mixed (co-ed) team event, which is making its debut at the 2026 Games.
When she’s not training and traveling, Ro—who’s the second-oldest of 11 siblings, including a twin sister who’s 14 minutes younger—works as a tour guide at the Lake Placid Olympic Center, one of numerous athletes in lower-profile sports who supplements her bank account with a day job.
“I work there, I train there, I live and breathe that atmosphere all the time,” she explained. “And tourists love it because you have an athlete walking you around the facility, giving you their unique perspective. It’s really cool, but it’s not going to cover everything I need to do this sport.”
