An international medalist in skeleton by the age of 20, Mellisa Hollingsworth is no stranger to success in the sport, as she is the cousin of Ryan Davenport, a champion Canadian skeleton racer in the late 1990s. Prior to snagging the silver in the women’s event at the 2000 World Championships she ran track and played basketball at the provincial level. Nevertheless,her road to Olympic success was a rocky one: she nearly quit the sport after being denied the opportunity to compete for Team Canada at the 2002 Winter Olympics a mere three weeks before the opening ceremony. Yet, by the end of the 2005-06 season of the skeleton World Cup, she had claimed the woman’s overall title at the Skeleton World Cup and at the 2006 Winter Olympics she captured the bronze medal in the women’s skeleton event. She was considered a medal favorite in the women’s event at the 2010 Winter Olympics, but a terrible final left her in fifth place at the end of the tournament. She was so distraught at her final position that she apologized to the Canadian public for her result. In her spare time, Hollingsworth works with Right to Play and has donated time and money to the organization’s efforts in Ghana.
Canada