Olympics-Bobsleigh-Veteran Americans racing with new perspective on medals and life

By Mitch Phillips

CORTINA D’AMPEZZO, Italy, Feb 14 (Reuters) – American bobsleigh rivals Elana Meyers Taylor and Kaillie Armbruster Humphries have 81 years, 11 Olympics, nine medals and three children between them but are in no mood to hand over the stage to the next generation just yet.

They go head to head in the monobob competition on Sunday and Monday when the first bobsleigh medals of the Games will be decided, having taken gold and silver when the event made its debut four years ago.

Armbruster Humphries won it, having previously claimed two golds and a bronze in the Two-Woman event for Canada after starting her Olympic journey as an unused alternate 20 years ago. 

She switched nationalities in 2021 after a long and fractious fallout with Canadian officials over harassment claims.

Meyers Taylor was second in the monobob in 2022, adding to her haul of two silvers and two bronze medals in Two-Woman.

More medals look on the cards in Cortina, with the Two-Woman to come after the Monobob, where training finished on Saturday.

The 41-year-old Meyers Taylor clocked four top-three times, with Armbruster Humphries, 40, fastest in the third round before opting to sit out Saturday’s final sessions.

Standing in their way will be Germany’s World Cup champion Laura Nolte and her compatriot Lisa Buckwitz, both of whom have looked sharp all week.

BATTLE FOR GOLD

For the two Americans, however, the battle for gold has become something of a secondary issue as they embrace motherhood and activism.

Meyers Taylor has two sons, both born deaf and one with Down syndrome, and the joy of raising them, along with the challenges those issues have brought, has given her a new perspective to racing down the ice at 85mph.

Asked this week what it would mean if she finally bagged an Olympic gold medal, she said: “It’s funny. It would mean everything and it would mean nothing all at the same time.

“I came back with the intention that if I had an opportunity to go for a gold medal I was going to give everything I had to it, but in the process I’ve learned that there’s so much more to the sport.  

“There’s so much more to my life, there’s so much more to me than this medal. I am going to do everything I can to lay it all down, walk away with the gold medal. But, at the end of the day, a gold medal is not going to change who I am.”

Armbruster Humphries does not really need to strive for gold either having become the first woman in history to win one for two different countries.

But she also has a burning desire to show that she can still perform having given birth to her son in June 2024 after a long and challenging IVF journey.

“For sure, 100% I’m a lot more easy-going. I have this new lease on sport when it comes to controlling what I can control, letting go of the fear that if it’s not perfect it can’t happen,” she told Reuters in an interview ahead of the Games.

“I think understanding of being a mum on tour, I got two hours’ sleep last night, you still have to slide, you don’t just get to give up.”

For all their new-found maturity and perspective, however, the two women have never lost their joy for the sport and both said this week they still feel privileged to be part of it.

“I absolutely love it,” Meyers Taylor said. “At the end of the day, I’m a kid flying downhill.”

(Reporting by Mitch Phillips, additional reporting by Lori Ewing, editing by Ken Ferris)