Canada’s Humphries won’t be stopped
PYEONGCHANG, SOUTH KOREA— Kaillie Humphries and Heather Moyse had gold medals, and thanks to a group of sportswriters who had appreciated their accomplishment, they had a couple bottles of champagne. They would drink them at the closing ceremony of the Sochi Olympics, was the plan. It would be great. Except security wouldn’t let them in with the bottles, gold medals and all. So the two-time bobsled champs turned around, saw three guys in Canada gear, and invited them to sit down on the curb and drink champagne from the bottle before the ceremony began, as the sun went down.
“Even with the medals they don’t give two sh-ts who you are,” says Humphries. “You’re Canadian, but they don’t care: you’re trying to bring in a liquid. We tried to say we won them at an event, and we tried to get them in any way we could. So we had a choice to chuck it, leave it or drink it.”
Four years later, Humphries is aiming for a third straight gold in the two-woman bobsled in Pyeongchang at age 32, though likely with a different partner this time. Moyse came out of retirement at age 39 and after a hip surgery, but only after saying no to both Humphries and the coaches who asked her to come back. She came back, she said, to mentor the kids on the team. “Besides Kaillie, who’s focused on doing what she needs to do to be successful,” says Moyse, “there was no other woman who had been to a Games.”
So hurdler Phylicia George is a more likely partner.
Humphries often stands alone, in more ways than one.
“I’m trying to win, and I’ve got a lot of pressure and stress to do that that I’ve placed upon myself, that other people have invested in me, that I want to know I’ve done everything possible to live up to that, and to be the very best,” says Humphries, her hair spilling away from the shaved side of her head.
“And I believe that’s possible. And I want to make sure that it continues to be possible.”
And as a result, there can be friction.
Humphries wanted to race with men, and clashed with Bobsled Canada over the experience. She still bristles over being charged $2,500 to be on the team after an illness-influenced seventh-place finish at the world championship in 2015, and over having to pay for her own coach, Stu McMillan, versus Bobsled Canada’s coaches. She is uncompromising as an athlete, and maybe that’s why she’s so great. Clashes can occur, but Humphries believes her track record should always carry the day.
“Sometimes it does, and sometimes I’m not the team, and I get outvoted,” she says. “In which case it gets very hard and very political. And in those situations I really question what I’m doing, why I’m here.”
What kinds of issues have provoked disagreements?
“Coaching decisions, teammate decisions, brakeman decisions, equipment decisions, therapy decisions, all of the above.”
Sometimes, sports isn’t easy. Humphries is not a mentor to the kids; she wants to be the best, and that’s it. She says, “Rookies need your expertise, but I don’t need that to be better.”
Rookie Olympic teammate Alysia Rissling says of Humphries, “Her application of force . . . Kaillie’s just really strong, every step. She’s the best driver in the world. (But) she’s very poor of articulating what she’s doing in a corner; she just feels it. She’s not the kind of person — like, I rely on the guys a lot for tips and tricks, because she has trouble articulating what she’s doing; she just understands the track differently than anyone else.”
A lot of athletic geniuses are like that; they can do, but not teach. Humphries, meanwhile, is aiming to cement her legacy as one of this country’s defining Olympic athletes; she talks to former rower Marnie McBean, figure skaters Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir, short-track speed skater Charles Hamelin, moguls skier Mikael Kingsbury about the tension between high performance and the still-emerging Canadian sports system.
“I know I’m not alone in that scenario,” Humphries says. “And we have moments where we are (all about winning), and we have moments where we go back to being the cuddly Canadians.”
Humphries isn’t cuddly, and not because of the tattoos and shaved scalp.
Asked what hasn’t changed since she attended the 2006 Games as an alternate, she cites her drive, her ferocity, her intensity, and says it has gotten even stronger.
She says, “No holds barred, do everything possible in order to be the best that I can be. “
And when asked the name of her sled, she says, “Jezebel. It started out as the name of a tractor from a family, and she was a b-tch of a tractor but stuck around for forever, and ended up being the most valuable piece of equipment that family owned.
“And I brought the name of that sled over, and I discovered it meant many different things. So whether she is slippery and/or harsh on the track, she holds no bars, and takes names, and does what has to be done. And I allow her to do that on the track.”
It sounded like she might have been talking about more than the sled. Kaillie Humphries is here to win.
She applies force, and never stops.