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By TIM REYNOLDS AP Sports Writer
A year later than she wanted, Noelle Pikus-Pace has her gold medal.
Pikus-Pace, who missed the 2006 Turin Olympics after breaking her right leg in a training accident, took the women's skeleton world championship at St. Moritz, Switzerland, on Friday in dominating fashion.
She beat Olympic gold medalist Maya Pedersen, who was racing on her home track, by 1.56 seconds -- the biggest victory margin in the event's history.
"I had tears in my eyes even before my last run and all I was thinking about was Feb. 16, 2006," Pikus-Pace told The Associated Press in a telephone interview, referring to last year's Olympic skeleton race. "That big margin is strictly because of the motivation I had in me, my desire, my mindset."
She was fastest in all four heats of the two-day event, finishing with a combined time of 4 minutes, 44.13 seconds and capping the performance with a track-record run of 1:10.34 -- which works out to doing 83 mph headfirst down the icy track.
And then the tears really started flowing.
"I couldn't keep it in any more, so I just broke down and started crying," Pikus-Pace said. "People thought it was because I was so excited about winning and overcome with joy. But it was more than that for me. It was about this journey."
Pikus-Pace, of Orem, Utah, became the first American women's skeleton racer to win the gold at either an Olympics or world championships since Tristan Gale prevailed at the Salt Lake Games in 2002. She was one of two U.S. medalists; current World Cup leader Katie Uhlaender was third, 0.16 seconds behind Pedersen.
"It's been awesome sliding with Noelle," Uhlaender said. "We definitely push each other to be better."
The overall World Cup champion in 2005, Pikus-Pace saw her Olympic plans derailed when she was struck by a bobsled in October 2005. She went through two surgeries and, even though her leg was far from healed, she resumed sliding about three months later in an ultimately futile bid to make the U.S. Olympic team.
Her confidence was slipping, too.
Entering the world championships, Pikus-Pace hadn't won any of her last 13 events -- over a span of more than two years -- yet picked a perfect time to end that drought.
"You can imagine what kind of doubts go through your mind when you're not on top anymore," Pikus-Pace said. "It took more for me to get here than it did anyone else."
She still has a titanium rod stretching from her right knee to right ankle and, just days before the world championships began, said her confidence was not back to where it was before the accident.
It's back now.
"Talk about a comeback story," U.S. assistant skeleton coach Greg Sand said.
Winning on St. Moritz's historic track provided Pikus-Pace with some interesting symmetry, too.
Exactly 53 weeks before Friday's winning runs, Pikus-Pace finished 11th in a World Cup race at St. Moritz. She left the track that day knowing her shot of making the Olympic team was gone, and she was still battling the physical and emotional burden of dealing with the injury.
So while her family went to Cesana Pariol for the Olympic races -- "Hey, they had tickets," Pikus-Pace said -- she went on vacation in southern Italy, settling to watch the competition on television.
"I took all the emotion of last year, harnessed it and put it into this," Pikus-Pace said. "I didn't forget about it. I put it into something better and it didn't hold me back -- it drove me to do my best. And this is such a contrast. This is the best race I've ever been in."
The previous record for victory margin in a women's world championships or Olympics had been held by Canada's Michelle Kelly, who took the 2003 world title in Nagano, Japan, by 1.31 seconds.
Pikus-Pace was second to Pedersen in the 2005 world championships, missing the gold by 0.1 seconds. This time, she left nothing to chance.
"I still haven't fully grasped what happened today," Pikus-Pace said. "I couldn't ask for more."
(Copyright 2007 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.) APTV-01-26-07 1517MST
