CORTINA D’AMPEZZO, Italy — The Puerto Rican team at the Milan-Cortina Winter Games isn’t large.
In fact, Kellie Delka stands just 5-foot-3 and weighs about 120 pounds. That’s it; that’s Puerto Rico’s entire team.
Her only event is skeleton, in which athletes travel at about 80 mph down an icy mile-long track with 16 turns. And she won’t be in the hunt for a medal in Saturday’s final rounds after finishing 24th of 25 athletes in Friday’s two heats.
Yet her presence is important just the same because it means Puerto Rico has a team here, even if it was just one person. For most of the century, that wasn’t the case.
“I was approached by the federation. They’re like, ‘hey, they’re trying to grow their winter federation. Maybe that would be something you’d be interested in helping,” she said. “So in 2018, I dropped everything, and I’ve been living on the island ever since.”
That was the first step of what Puerto Rico hopes will be a rebirth of a Winter Olympics program that had been razed to the ground.
In 2002, the island was set to send a bobsled team to the Winter Games in Salt Lake City but one of its sledders couldn’t prove he met Puerto Rico’s residency requirement. Embarrassed, the local Olympic committee didn’t just withdraw its two-man team, it ended recognition for all of the island’s winter sports.
No athlete would represent the territory in the Winter Games for another 16 years, until Charles Flaherty, a teenage American-born skier who moved to Puerto Rico when he was nine, competed in the 2018 Winter Games. A year later an ice hockey federation was established and in 2023 a curling federation.
In between those two things Delka, 38, made her Olympic debut, carrying the Puerto Rican flag with William Flaherty, Charles’ younger brother, in the opening ceremony in Beijing.
She carried it by herself in Italy.
Kellie Delka waves the flag of Puerto Rico during the Winter Olympic opening ceremony on Feb. 6.
(Misper Apawu / Associated Press)
Because Puerto Rico is an unincorporated U.S. territory, its residents are citizens of the U.S., but to represent the island in the Olympics, you must be born in Puerto Rico, have a parent or grandparent who was born there or live there for at least two years.
It was that final requirement that Delka, a native Texas, was seeking to fulfill when she moved to the island.
“I love the island, I love the people,” she said. “I’ll probably live there forever.”
A pole vaulter and cheerleader at the University of North Texas, Delka was introduced to skeleton by Johnny Quinn, a fellow North Texas alum who competed in the bobsled. She made her international debut in 2013 and was competing for the U.S. through the end of 2017, when Puerto Rico’s federation called.
Leaving a team to go it alone was more difficult than she expected.
“That was the hardest part,” she said. “When you go by yourself, like, it’s a pretty lonely journey. And then not having a coach the whole time, because you have to pay for that as well.
“I love the sport. I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t love it, because you definitely don’t make money from it.”
Eight years later, Delka speaks no Spanish but says she feels intensely Puerto Rican. She gets some financial support from an International Olympic Committee scholarship fund and small, intermittent assistance from the federation. But mostly she supports herself in the sport, in part by selling bikinis she designed on the beach in Luquillo, the tiny community on the northeast tip of the island where she lives.
Puerto Rico’s Kellie Delka hopes she can inspire other athletes to represent the island in the Winter Olympics.
(Alessandra Tarantino / Associated Press)
“I love to sew, I like to make jewelry. I like to make bikinis, and I like to be involved in the community,” she said. “That’s how you meet people.”
Next she wants to inspire them. Because there’s no use in starting an Olympic team if no one else wants to join.
“I would love a teammate,” she said. “I don’t want it to just be me forever, like right now it is.
“I want to start mentoring younger people because I want kids to know that you don’t have to have everything to make it. I don’t have anything. I’m doing this by myself. I’m going to the gym by myself, I’m going to the track by myself, I’m traveling by myself.
“You can do it too, and I can help you do it.”
Sometimes all you need is one person to get started.
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