Dan Barefoot sits 19th after Olympic skeleton debut as hometown rallies ahead of final heats

Geistown, Pennsylvania, native Dan Barefoot made his Olympic debut in Italy on Thursday, completing his first two skeleton heats for Team USA and finishing the day 19th overall. The final two runs are set for Friday at 1:30 p.m. ET and 3:30 p.m. ET, with hometown supporters in Cambria County already celebrating his milestone moment.

Two runs down, two to go

Barefoot opened his men’s skeleton competition with a first-run time of 57.47 seconds, placing 19th out of 24 sliders. He found additional speed in his second trip, posting 57.22 seconds to hold 19th entering the decisive final day. With two more heats to come, cumulative time across all four runs will determine his final standing in the Olympic field.

The steady improvement from his first to second heat offers a positive sign as he chases a late-week climb up the order. Skeleton margins are notoriously tight, with hundredths of a second often separating multiple athletes after four heats. A cleaner push start and precise lines through the track’s most technical sections could put Barefoot in position to gain spots on Friday.

Friday’s schedule in ET

The men’s skeleton competition concludes Friday, with Heat 3 scheduled for 1:30 p.m. ET and Heat 4 at 3:30 p.m. ET. Start order for Heat 3 follows the standings after the opening day, while Heat 4 typically inverts among the top qualifiers to close the event. With his two Thursday times locked, Barefoot’s task is clear: stack two strong runs to consolidate gains and deliver his best cumulative total of the season when it matters most.

Hometown pride at Richland High School

Back home in Cambria County, Barefoot’s alma mater turned Thursday into a celebration. Students and staff at Richland High School held a USA Spirit Day, packing classrooms and hallways with red, white, and blue in a show of support. The school’s principal said Barefoot has created a “great buzz” in the community and sparked curiosity about a sport many are discovering for the first time.

“It’s just something that they’re talking about all the time and they’re educating themselves, and teachers have done some information or some lessons in classrooms just on the Olympics itself,” the principal said. “So, it’s just a pretty cool time.”

The outpouring reflects Barefoot’s roots in the region and the rare spotlight skeleton brings to local fans. For many in the district, his Olympic start offers both a window into a fast, technical sport and a point of shared pride during a global showcase.

A ‘weird’ path to the ice

Barefoot’s ascent to the Games has been, as he puts it, “weird.” A 2013 Penn State graduate in architecture, he carved a demanding academic routine that later evolved into a daily training habit once he entered the workforce. Seeking a new challenge one winter, he explored sliding sports and discovered skeleton’s unique development pipeline, where latecomers can thrive with the right mix of explosiveness, precision, and persistence.

He signed up for a tryout and methodically climbed the ladder, balancing travel and training as the sport shifted from a side pursuit to a central focus. Now in his ninth competitive season at age 35, he lives and trains out of the Olympic Training Center in Lake Placid, New York, while working part time and remotely to keep the singular pursuit afloat.

Late-season gambles that paid off

This Olympic berth was not guaranteed. After a challenging start to the season, Barefoot realized he needed to make up ground to reach Team USA. He prefers not to track his running points during the campaign, a mental strategy designed to keep attention on execution rather than math. Midway through, he checked in and recognized the urgency.

Guided by coaching input, he took a calculated gamble to race a set of lower-tier events at his home track in Lake Placid. Though the points on offer were smaller than on higher circuits, the opportunity to race multiple times on familiar ice helped him bank critical results. That decision, combined with improved equipment and sharper starts, pushed him over the qualification line and into the Olympic four-heat test he is now completing.

What to watch in the final heats

Friday’s path to upward movement centers on the push start, sled setup, and mistake-free transitions through the track’s most punishing corners. His second-run time drop from 57.47 to 57.22 suggests he and his support team found speed late on Thursday. Replicating that trajectory twice more could be the difference between holding ground and capturing a late Olympic surge.

Whatever the final tally, Barefoot’s debut marks a milestone for a veteran slider with a nontraditional story—and for a Western Pennsylvania community that turned a school day into a celebration of grit, speed, and Olympic dreams.