Kaillie’s winning smile
GOLDEN GIRL Champion bobsledder Kaillie Humphries, who won gold in Sochi, takes a selfie with the Lou Marsh trophy during a stop Tuesday at the Star to pick up the award she won as Canada’s athlete of the year in 2014.
Kaillie Humphries replied to a Toronto homeless man’s cheery “good morning, beautiful” with a “guten morgen” of her own. That’s a sign of just how long she’s been racing bobsleds in Germany this year.
On Tuesday, back in Canada for the first time in months, she finally got to hold her 2014 Lou Marsh Trophy, awarded to Canada’s outstanding athlete.
It has been a long season and, judged by results, not the most successful one for the back-to-back Olympic champion. She finished second overall in women’s bobsled, one back from her accustomed spot. But it was, in many ways, her most important season ever.
Humphries was the first person to break the gender barrier by competing against men in a four-man sled at the world championships and in most of the World Cup races.
“Being the only girl in a jam-packed room full of dudes, everyone looks at you differently. I stand on the start line and everybody looks at me with my long golden braid that no one is used to seeing,” Humphries said. “I had a lot of women come up to me afterwards and say ‘good job’ and ‘go get ‘em’ and that’s really cool to be a part of.”
The Lou Marsh Trophy, named after the legendary Toronto Star sports editor, is handed out each December to Canada’s top athlete — man or woman, professional or amateur.
“You’ve joined the 75 best Canadian athletes of all time,” Toronto Star publisher John Cruickshank said, as he presented Humphries with her long-awaited trophy.
“You bring tremendous pride and pleasure to Canadians,” he said, noting her spectacular feat of winning gold at the 2010 Vancouver Olympics and then defending it at the 2014 Sochi Games.
As hard as winning is, Humphries has discovered that changing sport can be even harder but comes with rewards of its own.
“Winning, losing, it used to mean everything to me,” said the Calgary, Alta., native. “I’m 29 now . . . the legacy I want to leave behind becomes a lot more relevant to me than just winning.” For now, anyway. Humphries is already thinking about how to attract the lightning-fast brakeman she needs to get back on top in the women’s event and on being more competitive in the four-man event against the men. Beyond that, she has her eye on new faster sleds before the next Olympics, in Pyeongchang, South Korea in 2018.
Humphries is clear she wants to get back to what she’s best known for: delivering medals when it really counts to Canadians.