Keely Kelleher is Montana. She’s the prototypical outdoor girl who loves those sports that cause a little trepidation: She spends the winters skiing 70 mph down mountaintops and the summers running raucous rapids.
    “The rapids are big,” Kelleher exclaims, the day after running Gallatin River outside her parent’s house in Big Sky, Mont. “There’s a huge runoff this year since we’ve had a ton of snow.”
    As a U.S. Ski Teamer, Kelleher specializes in downhill alpine racing where last year she placed in the top 10 in a few Europa Cups and gained valuable World Cup experience. In the summers, however, she relishes her time spent back home in the Treasure State running the famed rivers. Staying active is just part of her personality.
     “Keels on Wheels” — a nickname coined by an encounter that involved rhyming while road biking alongside men's alpine team member Jeremy Transue — after all, is always on the move and moving fast. For her, skiing and kayaking provide the perfect marriage of skills. “Picking a line down a rapid, and nailing that line and executing it and not being scared, it was a really cool way to learn how to be a more fearless [skier],” Wheels says.
KEELY KELLEHER is Montana. She’s the prototypical outdoor girl who loves those sports that cause a little trepidation: She spends the winters skiing 70 mph down mountaintops and the summers running raucous rapids.
    “The rapids are big,” Kelleher exclaims, the day after running Gallatin River outside her parent’s house in Big Sky, Mont. “There’s a huge runoff this year since we’ve had a ton of snow.”
    As a U.S. Ski Teamer, Kelleher specializes in downhill alpine racing where last year she placed in the top 10 in a few Europa Cups and gained valuable World Cup experience. In the summers, however, she relishes her time spent back home in the Treasure State running the famed rivers. Staying active is just part of her personality.
     “Keels on Wheels” — a nickname coined by an encounter that involved rhyming while road biking alongside men's alpine team member Jeremy Transue — after all, is always on the move and moving fast. For her, skiing and kayaking provide the perfect marriage of skills. “Picking a line down a rapid, and nailing that line and executing it and not being scared, it was a really cool way to learn how to be a more fearless [skier],” Wheels says.
    “It made me fearless,” she adds, “since it’s a scary sport for a lot of people. Starting so young I was super scared to learn how to roll and be under water and be strapped to a boat. It’s pretty intimidating for a 7 year old. Eventually it just became a part of who I was and how I grew up.”

'Wheels' used to overcoming challenges
At age 7, her dad Kevin introduced Wheels to kayaking. She chased around her older sister Brenna who later became a kayaking junior world champion. Wheels quickly progressed, too, and started to compete in freestyle events and run bigger water. At the young age or 12, however, she learned what fear was all about.
    “When I was 12, that’s when I started running the bigger stuff and really getting into kayaking and not being as scared,” she says. “This one rapid is called Kitchen Sink on the Bear Trap in Montana, and it’s not even that big of a rapid but we ran it at a pretty high water and I got pinned above this drop. My boat went sideways into two rocks over this little drop off. The water started moving over me and I flipped over and was underneath the water, but luckily my sister was there and was able to pull me out of my boat. I don’t know if you’ve ever picked up a kayak full of water but it is really heavy. I pulled my spray deck, and my sister had to pull me out and pull half the kayak out and she was only 14, 15. I was underneath the water for almost a minute and I almost drowned. That was the scariest moment I’ve ever had in a kayak.”
    Whereas most people would have quit the sport that instant, Wheels didn’t back down and says the sport in many ways has taught her much about her determination in skiing. In 2003, she broke her tibia and fibula at a preseason camp in Colorado. Since then she has struggled with complications and fought through a half-dozen surgeries over the course of four years. But she didn’t give in. She faced the fear like she did at age 12.
    “It took me a while to get back into it but I’m not going to give up,” she says. “This is a challenge. I’m going to challenge my mind to not be scared and learn how to go for it again. You just take baby steps to get back to where you were.”
    After a solid 2007-08 ski season, look for Wheels to make an impact on the world stage. If fear isn’t holding her back, nothing should.