At some point for Kaillie Humphries, it wasn’t enough to simply win back-to-back Olympic gold medals and back-to-back world championships in women’s bobsleigh. At some point, it wasn’t enough to have her legacy written along the bottom line or on trophies and plaques.
At some point for the 2014 Lou Marsh Trophy winner, it became about blazing a trail; about making a difference for female athletes in her competitive sphere and about literally growing her sport. So she asked a question: why shouldn’t there be a four-woman bobsleigh competition as well as four-man? And asked it, and asked it, and found some people who agreed.
“At the end of the day, it really is about a legacy,” Humphries said earlier this year, after finding out that the international governing body for bobsleigh and luge had agreed to allow mixed-gender sleds to compete on the World Cup four-man circuit, a cause that she and U.S. bobsledder Elana Meyers had championed for the better part of 18 months.
“This wasn’t something that was a whim. I want to leave this sport better than I found it when I came in to it, and trying to help get a women’s four-man competition is a step in the right direction.”
How do you decide who is a country’s athlete of the year in any given 12-month period, anyhow? That was the issue facing journalists from across the country on Wednesday as they gathered in a boardroom in the Toronto Star to select the winner of the Lou Marsh Trophy, named after a former sports editor of The Star.
If it was simply a matter of name recognition, then three of the other five finalists — Los Angeles Kings defenceman Drew Doughty and tennis players Eugenie Bouchard and Milos Roanic — deserved to dwarf Humphries and the fifth finalist, lacrosse player Johnny Powless from Six Nations, Ont., who already has a lifetime of individual and team awards at the age of 21.
If it was a matter of depth of competition, then Doughty and Raonic would likely be given pre-eminence (I don’t follow tennis, but those who do tell me the men’s game is in a time of historical depth of excellence compared to the women’s game).
If it was a matter of the wow factor of one moment, then how could it not be Bouchard? This was the year that a Canadian reached a final of a Grand Slam event and not just any; this was the year that Genie Bouchard reached the ladies final of Wimbledon.
I was lucky enough to be included in the voting pool this year, and I had little trouble picking Humphries first — with Bouchard second — because she won. And won. And won.
Indeed, she did everything we can ask of our athletes: winning a gold medal in an Olympic year — no second chance for that folks; choke and it’s a four-year wait — while winning the world title for a second consecutive year.
After racing with three different brakemen in the previous two competitive seasons, Humphries reunited with the brakeman from her 2010 Vancouver Olympic gold, Heather Moyse, and won her first race of the season while finishing second in the second race to extend her podium streak to 15 consecutive races. Humphries and Moyse had two more first-place finishes and, at Sochi, staged a comeback to successfully defend their Vancouver gold after being in second place following the first two of four races.
Humphries, a 29-year-old Calgary native, will be competing in women’s bobsleigh in Lake Placid, N.Y., this weekend when the World Cup season commences. Since she and Meyers both qualified this past weekend to drive in the World Cup four-man competition, Humphries and her team of three men will make their competitive debut in the second World Cup race of the year, at Calgary Olympic Park.
Humphries came to bobsleigh after a pair of broken legs ended her nascent alpine skiing career. She was named an alternate brakeman on the Canadian team at the 2006 Olympics in Torino and began driving in 2007, where her skill caught the eye of Canadian men’s driver Pierre Lueders, who became a de facto personal driving coach. Along the way, she has become an ambassador for Right To Play and has become an anti-bullying advocate.
Humphries claimed that her entry into four-man bobsleigh won’t deter her from remaining competitive in women’s bobsleigh. It is inordinately expensive to become and remain competitive — bobsleigh is a massively-funded sport in Europe, where it pulls down big television ratings — and while the Canadian team does travel with technicians, much of the preparation before races or practice runs is done by the competitors themselves. The G-forces and pounding on the body in a four-man sled are much more pronounced; Humphries, then, will have less mental and physical down-time.
The difference between women’s bobsleigh and four-man bobleigh, she said, “is like going from driving a big truck to a tiny race car. It’s a lot more difficult to save yourself in certain situations, because the handling is more responsive. In four-man, everything is more precise; everything takes a split-second longer. The driving aspects are the same: you still pull left and right with your hands and where you steer is in the same spot, but everything is amplified because of the weight and velocity and G-force and strength.
“My time in the sport has been absolutely amazing, but I’m ready to do this and need a new challenge,” Humphries said. “I think the sport is ready for this. I think women are ready for this challenge.”
Rest assured that one woman in particular is ready. All she does is meet challenges head on and defeat them. All she does is win when it matters. The only person that would dare ask more of Kaillie Humphries than what she delivered in 2014 is Kaillie Humphries herself.