In the first-ever Olympic monobob competition, Team USA athletes were quick to put their mark on the new monobob event: On February 14, Kaillie Humphries won gold in the inaugural race, followed closely by her new teammate Elana Meyers Taylor, who clinched silver.
Humphries finished with a time of 4:19.27 to secure her first-place finish, with Meyers Taylor clocking in at just over a second and a half behind to come in second. According to the International Olympics Committee (IOC), this was the largest margin to victory in any Olympic bobsled event in 42 years. Canada’s Christine de Bruin finished just a quarter of a second behind Meyers Taylor to round out the podium at the 2022 Winter Games.
“Nobody was catching her today,” Meyers Taylor said about Humphries to the New York Times after the event.
While the monobob event was new to the Olympic stage, bobsledders Humphries and Meyers Taylor are not: Both athletes are four-time Olympians, but the 2022 Winter Games in Beijing marks the first time the two medalists competed on the same team for it. Prior to the 2022 Games, Humphries represented her home country Team Canada, and earned two gold medals and a bronze along the way.
Humphries left Team Canada in 2019 after alleging mental and emotional abuse against its head coach. In December of 2021, after a long road working toward U.S. citizenship, she was finally cleared for it, which allowed her to compete for Team USA in the Olympics.
“It wasn’t an easy decision. I very much value the opportunity, the life, and the freedom the USA has offered me. I’m very honored to wear the red, white, and blue, and to represent the Stars and Stripes. And it’s not that I forget about what I had with Team Canada—that will forever be a big part of my history,” she told SELF in her February digital cover story. “But, looking forward, I knew I needed to save myself, and nobody else was going to do it for me. It took risking it all in order to be able to walk away.”
The path to the top of the podium in Beijing wasn’t exactly smooth for Meyers Taylor, either. Two days after arriving in Beijing, Meyers Taylor tested positive for an asymptomatic case of COVID-19. As part of Beijing’s Olympic COVID-19 protocols, Meyers Taylor self-isolated in her hotel room, where she continued to train as best as she could, walking back and forth across the length of the room and cycling on an indoor bike, as NBC reported. She was named Team USA’s flag bearer for the Olympic opening ceremony, but wasn’t able to attend because of her diagnosis.
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Then, on February 5, she was cleared to compete after producing two negative test results, which allowed her to take her place at the monobob start line on February 14.
“It feels better than gold,” Meyers Taylor told Team USA about her silver finish after the event. “This is definitely the most difficult medal I’ve ever earned. It’s definitely been the hardest journey to get here. I am so excited to take this medal back to my son at the hotel.”
Meyers Taylor, who became a mom to son Nico in February 2020, is also championing a movement to treat athletes holistically, to view them as more than their sport and to treat them as such.
“I’ve been there where bobsled was the only thing I had going for me. It’s a very lonely path to go down,” she told SELF in her February digital cover story. “I think making the sport your sole focus does cause some of the mental health issues we see in athletes…It’s a sport at the end of the day. We are hurling ourselves down an icy hill at breakneck speeds. It’s supposed to be fun.”
Bobsled continues at the 2022 Winter Olympics with the two-woman sled on February 18. Here’s how to watch the Olympic event!
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Source: SELF
