Comeback drama
Bobsled duo wins gold after Americans self-destruct
They stopped Cheryl and Ray Simundson at one of the gates leading into the main grandstand as the moment approached, and a sense of panic flashed over both. There was a language barrier, a ticking clock: “I’m Kaillie’s mom and they’re not letting me in.”
Kaillie Humphries, the defending Olympic champion, was perhaps an hour from her final run in the two-woman bobsled at the Sochi Olympics. Her parents watched in the rain for three hours the previous night — Ray, who had been sick with strep throat, had ruined a cowboy hat in the process — and were trying to get in to see their daughter.
Suddenly, a wave of the hand, movement. The barrier cracked and by the end of the night Cheryl and Kaillie met at another barrier inside, embracing by the bottom of the stands in the joy of an unprecedented repeat as Olympic champion.
“I’ve got more nerves and I’m more shaky now than I was during the whole entire thing,” Cheryl said. “And when she jumped over the fence and hugged me. She was shaking and crying and she’s like, ‘Mom, I love you, I don’t know what to do.’ ”
Her mother said: “Enjoy it ... enjoy it.”
Humphries and her brakeman Heather Moyse certainly deserve to enjoy every moment of a night that will go down in sporting history at the Winter Olympics.
Trailing by .23 seconds after two heats (an eternity in bobsled), Humphries and Moyse roared back to defend their title from Vancouver. In doing so, the Canadians became the first women to win bobsled gold in back-to-back Olympics on a night where they became the hunters instead of the hunted.
After the third run, just .11 seconds separated the secondplace Humphries and Moyse from front-running Elana Meyers and Lauryn Williams of the United States.
“I just looked at her and I said, ‘It’s possible,’ and it’s all Kaillie needed to know,” said Moyse, 35. “The gap wasn’t closed, but it was possible.”
By design, Humphries refuses to look at the leaderboard in the middle of races so as not to drive herself insane.
“It’s a way for me to relieve pressure, relieve tension and stress,” the 28-year-old Calgarian said. “I get too wrapped up in chasing a time, and I get really panicky in the sled — oh, a little hit here, five-hundredths here, a hundredth there. When I don’t know times, ignorance is bliss.”
With nothing left to do, Humphries and Moyse held hands at the bottom of the track and watched the final run.
Sure enough, Meyers and Williams self-destructed, bumping off walls and bleeding time as they hurtled down the canyon of ice.
The Americans settled for silver and bronze, with Meyers fin- ishing second — just a 10th of a second back from Humphries — and her countrywoman Jamie Gruebel coming in third.
“When you have to rely on somebody else, or wait and see, it makes it hard, because it’s out of your control,” Humphries said. “I never wish bad on people but I was thinking ‘just make a few mistakes, please’. ”
Their prayers answered, Humphries and Moyse shrieked like school girls who just spotted Justin Bieber at the corner store. Disregarding Olympic protocol, they made a beeline for the stands and climbed over the fence to hug the ones who mean the most.
“It’s our parents,” Humphries said. “The people who have been there from the very beginning — the people that no matter what we could go to and go home to — that are going to love us no matter what. They’ve sacrificed just as much, if not more, than both of us have to be in this position.”
Funny thing is, Humphries and Moyse have shared the top perch of two Olympic podiums, but they actually didn’t speak to one another for more than two years after the 2006 Games in Turin, Italy.
Humphries blamed the bubbly Prince Edward Islander for taking her spot at the Olympics, and the silent treatment ensued.
On one memorable road trip in Europe, Moyse cracked open a book of conversation starters to ease the tension in the car.
“It’s a book of a 1,000 questions,” Moyse was saying Wednesday night after fielding a call from Prime Minister Stephen Harper. “If you could have dinner with any three people dead or alive, who would they be — those kinds of questions.
“I just started reading them. Kaillie’s not saying anything, but I’m reading them out loud and people are spitting out answers.
“It came to one and it said, ‘if you could get back at anyone who has wronged you in the past who would it be and what would you do?’ ”
The unintended question cracked the door open for what will go down for one of the most formidable sporting duos in Canadian history.
“Actually, I’ve come to realize what happened in Torino, it had nothing to do with you,” Humphries said, from her customary perch in the driver’s seat. “It wasn’t your fault. You were just doing your job.”
Two months later, Humphries and Moyse raced together for the first time. In their second competition, Humphries crashed, ejecting her passenger.
“I threw her out of the sled,” Humphries said, with a wink. “It wasn’t on purpose. I promise.”
A year later, they won gold in Vancouver, Four years later, gold in Sochi.
On a Russian mountain side Wednesday night, the two families crammed into four seats for five people to watch the former foes pull off what seemed like an impossibility.
“I had a few little heart palpitations,” Ray Simundson said. “But I’m feeling pretty damned good right now.”