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Kearns • Speedskater Kelly Gunther remembers riding in the ambulance after wrecking her leg in a devastating crash last year, imploring the paramedics to tell her that she would, indeed, be able to skate again one day.

"They were like, 'Uhhh … I don't know,' " she recalled.

They should see her now.

The 23-year-old West Jordan resident competed this week for the first time since her awful crash, racing the 500 and 1,000 meters this week at the U.S. Speedskating Championships at the Utah Olympic Oval. And though she didn't win, Gunther finished third with an unexpectedly fast time in the 1,000 on Tuesday and — perhaps most importantly — conquered her dark and smothering fears of skating in the same lane in which she crashed.

"She showed a lot of guts," said her coach, Ryan Shimabukuro, the national long-track team coach.

Although many skaters were coming off injury at the meet — Joey Lindsey of Salt Lake City won the 500 Tuesday after overcoming a back injury last summer, for example — few have endured a journey as agonizing as Gunther. Not only did she suffer a grotesque compound fracture when she crashed on the first turn of the 500 at the American Cup final last March, but she did so just a few months after missing her chance at competing in the 2010 Vancouver Olympics in one of the most devastating ways imaginable.

Gunther thought she had clinched a spot by winning the 1,000 at last year's national championships, which also served as the Olympic trials. Officials at U.S. Speedskating even congratulated her in a Twitter message.

But rival Rebekah Bradford of Magna had fallen at the finish of her race, and was allowed to re-skate the race alone — as rules permit, as a way of ensuring that a flukey mistake doesn't keep a top skater out of the Olympics.

"It's a good rule," said former gold medalist Derek Parra, who was coaching Gunther at the time, "but there are flaws."

In this case, Bradford, who had lost to Gunther in two head-to-head races, wound up skating faster than Gunther's winning time, and earning the Olympic spot. Gunther protested and later appealed — all to no avail. An arbitrator upheld the rule allowing Bradford to re-skate, and Gunther stayed home from Vancouver.

"I have never been through anything like that in my life," she said. "Going through that I think was the hardest thing I've ever had to deal with."

Even now, Gunther has to fight back tears when she talks about it.

"She was devastated," Parra recalled.

Still, Gunther refused to give up.

She returned to training at the Utah Olympic Oval the day after losing her arbitration hearing, and told her hometown newspaper in Michigan that she would return to win gold at the 2014 Sochi Games in Russia. She recalls not shedding so much as one tear after her accident last March, because she was so determined to come back.

"Somewhere else, someone's worse," she remembers thinking, "and I'm going to be OK. Even though my foot's hanging off my leg, I'm going to be OK."

Which is not to say the road has been easy.

After months of wearing a cast and then a walking boot, Gunther spent four months in painful rehabilitation at the U.S. Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs. She has been back on the ice for just two months — with 10 screws and a metal plate still in her foot to hold the shattered bones together as they heal. All of that hardware is going to have to come out, too, in another surgery after the season that will force Gunther into another round of rehab.

"It's kind of a two-year process, I guess," she said.

It's off to a good start, at least, even though Gunther knows that it's going to take months to reclaim her lost strength and fitness. Gunther finished her 1,000 in 1 minute and 18.65 seconds — a second or two faster than Shimabukuro expected.

Better still, she has overcome the fear of that first turn that had her "crying and shaking" all day in fearful anticipation of her first race here.

"I was really nervous, but I knew I had to face it," Gunther said. "It wasn't going to go away."

And even after all she has been through, neither is she.