Pedersen, a two-time world champion, said she was too nervous to eat Thursday. But when her dominating performance ended, she ran her fingers through snow along the end run and shrieked getting off the sled.

So, too, did Rudman — who alternated between crying and cheering as she saw she’d won a medal.

“I’m hoping this puts skeleton on the map in the U.K.,” she said.

Uhlaender had a steely look, eyes piercing through her mask before moving into the start area for her first run. She tapped fists with U.S. assistant coach Greg Sand, who clapped three times before Uhlaender put her sled to the ice, grasped the runners and began sprinting.

And the first moments were perfect. She had the fastest first-run start time in the field — 5.03 seconds — and went through the first section of track in 18.33 seconds, better than anyone else.

There, though, it began slipping away.

Having fallen off her ideal line, Uhlaender’s legs swayed from side to side along the ice, flailing like palm branches in a stiff breeze. In a span of four curves, she lost 0.24 seconds — falling from first to fourth, and the plummet didn’t stop. She finished in 1:00.87, 1.23 seconds behind Pedersen’s lead and 0.48 seconds away from Hollingsworth-Richards’ third-place spot.

It never got much better.

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“My first start, I rushed myself off the block and from that point on I was trying to catch up with myself,” Uhlaender said. “I took off and I wasn’t ready. I was just like, ’Ah, this is so exciting!’ Then, crap!”

When her second run was over, she looked at her time, then shook and bowed her head while coasting to a stop. She smacked her hands, then smiled and waved at her parents, brother, boyfriend and others who made up her cheering section.

And something her father, former major-leaguer Ted Uhlaender, said before her run finally made sense.

“He just told me to not worry about messing up and relax,” she said. “Man, I’ll tell you, he was right when he said that first at-bat is really hard to deal with.”

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