Mystique Ro’s "Me Time" at 80 Miles Per Hour

Most people find peace on a leisurely walk. Mystique Ro finds hers hurtling down an icy track at 80 miles per hour.

The U.S. Olympic skeleton athlete has built one of the more unexpected mental frameworks in elite sport, and she's got a name for it. She calls it "me time."

"I just get to be by myself, alone with my thoughts for about a minute," she says. "It's just me and the sled."

Skeleton is a sliding sport in which athletes launch themselves face-first onto a small sled and navigate a winding, frozen track at speeds approaching 90 miles per hour. There are no brakes. Steering happens through subtle shifts in body weight and shoulder pressure. It is, objectively, one of the most physically demanding and mentally precise disciplines in the Winter Games. 

And Mystique Ro? She's treating it like a spa day.

The Human Penguin

So what actually happens inside Ro's head when she's on the sled?

"Me time is just flowing. Obviously my focus is very much on the minute in front of me, which is sliding. But really just connecting the curves, being fluid. In my 'me time,' there's no emails, no text messages, no meetings. It's just me turning my brain off and going on autopilot."

Image Credit: Mystique Ro / Instagram

She paused before adding: "It's very contradictory sounding, but it really works for me."

The thing about skeleton is that the margin for error is measured in millimeters and milliseconds. One bad line through a curve and you're losing hundredths of a second you'll never get back. In a sport decided by fractions, full presence is the only currency.

Ro's answer is to turn her brain off.

The Learning Curve

Ro arrived at this philosophy with some trial and error. She made her World Cup debut as a lower-ranked athlete, flying mostly under the radar. And it turns out, anonymity has its advantages.

"When I first started out, no one cared what I was doing," she said. "I was a lower ranked athlete when I made my world cup debut and there really was no pressure on me. I made a commitment to just having fun and just being able to embrace being at the top tier of the international circuit. And then that's really when I began to see results."

Results, of course, bring expectations. And expectations bring a different kind of pressure.

"And then that's when the pressure started to come in with the expectation of going faster," she said. "I just had to think, well, at the end of the day, I'm still sliding. Remembering to have fun is still a big part of it. I think of it like being an adult kid."

Here's where Ro gets real.

"When you have a taste of success, you start to want more. And you can get a little greedy," she said. "There's really no shortcuts to success. It's easy to forget the process that is involved when you know what it's like at the top."

In a world with seemingly exponential strategies for managing pressure, fear, and the weight of Olympic competition, Mystique Ro keeps it simple. She gets on the sled. She turns her brain off. She connects the curves.

And for about a minute, it's just me time.

ABOUT THIS SERIES

I’m Amy Wotovich and I am on a mission to interview 100% of Team USA's 2026 Olympic and Paralympic athletes to create the most comprehensive mindset record of a single Games cycle. What do elite competitors actually believe about pressure, identity, failure, and joy? Mystique Ro is one of hundreds of athletes sharing their unfiltered answers. Follow the journey!