1:17A former Dartmouth hockey player, a Boston University lacrosse player, two Minnesota RollerGirls and an Olympic hopeful stand out among the daredevils queuing up for the dizzying downhill ice race starting Thursday in St. Paul.
The five are the only female contestants among 164 qualifiers for the Red Bull Crashed Ice World Championships. All of the women are lifelong skaters who see the race as a once-in-a-lifetime chance for downhill ice-track racing through drops and hairpin turns.
The course, expected to take about 40 seconds, starts with an aggressively steep drop from the Cathedral of St. Paul on the hill overlooking downtown.
"It's pretty crazy," Amanda Trunzo of Andover said of the course. "But my mom's probably more scared than I am."
Trunzo, who coaches girls' hockey at Eden Prairie High School, heard about the crashed ice competition from her Canadian skating friends, who encouraged the speedy forward to try it. "They thought I would be good at it," she said. Quebec often plays host to similar contests.
The runs Thursday and Friday will be solo time trials, with the top 64 advancing to the finals Saturday. That's when four skaters will come out of the chutes together, creating high potential for wipeouts and crashes.
The women competitors come experienced at rough-and-tumble.
Trunzo, 22, played high school hockey at Benilde-St. Margaret's and won a full-ride Division I hockey scholarship. Brittany Salmon, 25, is a short-track speed-skater from Utah who hopes to contend for an Olympic berth. Jenny Taft, 24, played hockey at Edina High School and lacrosse in college. She's also a Fox Sports North TV personality. Jessica Sawicki, 25, and Lisa Sarne, 28, are both on a roller derby team.
