Kaillie Humphries' legacy of fighting for gender equity in bobsled is more important than trophies
CARLSBAD, Calif. – It wasn’t the trophy that mattered so much as the reason Kaillie Humphries didn’t get one.
When Humphries won her first world championship in bobsled, there was no trophy. There were for the winners of the two men’s events, however. Large, gleaming silver cups engraved with the names of previous champions, a celebration of both the sport’s present and its rich past.
This was in 2012, mind you, a dozen years after the women’s two-man race had made its debut at the world championships.
“I grew up in a household where you could do whatever you wanted, and gender didn't play a factor at all. So when I came into bobsled, I thought, `Well, this isn't right,” Humphries said.
Again, it wasn’t about the trophy. Humphries already had her signature piece of hardware, having won the first of her two (so far) Olympic gold medals in the event two years earlier while representing Canada. But it symbolized the dismissiveness the sport has for women, seeing them as afterthoughts or interlopers rather than full and equal participants.
With an assist from her parents, Cheryl and Ray Simundson, Humphries offered to purchase a trophy that could be given to future women’s world champions. Chastened, the International Bobsleigh and Skeleton Federation took care of it, and Humphries was its first recipient the following year.
The trophy still lacked the Stanley Cup-like recognition of previous champions, however. Humphries and her parents took it upon themselves to modify it, adding the names of past winners and giving it a new base so there was room for future champions.
“I hit a different part in my career where it wasn't so much about me anymore, it was about making a difference. It was about changing the game,” Humphries told USA TODAY Sports. “I'm able to stand on the shoulders of all the women that were before me. I have the opportunity to even be at an Olympics because of the women in the ‘80s and the ‘90s and the early 2000s that competed when the Olympics weren't even an option.
“And I want to make sure that the women after me also have greater opportunity.”
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Leading fight for gender equity
The bobsled competition at the Beijing Games begins Feb. 13 with the Olympic debut of monobob, a singles event. Humphries, along with fellow American Elana Meyers Taylor, was instrumental in getting the event added to the Olympic program.
Men’s four-man bobsled was part of the first Winter Olympics, in 1924, and the two-man was added eight years later. But it wasn’t until 2002 that women were allowed to race in the Olympics and, even then, only in the two-man.
“I never understood why women can’t do four-man,” Humphries said.
It’s not for a lack of asking. From the time Humphries traded in her skis for a sled – she was an Alpine skier until she was 16, giving up the sport after breaking both of her legs in separate accidents – she has been lobbying to compete in four-man.
She was told it wasn’t possible because women aren’t strong enough, a statement that’s laughable to anyone who’s ever seen Humphries or her workout videos. She’s been told she isn’t skilled enough, an equally absurd excuse given she’s a five-time world champion and the first woman driver to win two Olympic gold medals.
“Let's increase participation numbers. I want to see more women have the opportunity to compete in bobsled, to be able to try the sport, just be the best versions of themselves,” Humphries said. “And how was I going to continue to get better?
“For me, the answer was driving four-man. I need greater opportunities,” she said. “And if that's what I need, that's what a lot of other women need. And they should be afforded that opportunity.”
But bobsled isn't the most progressive of sports. And, early in her career, Humphries had other, more immediate battles to fight.
When she began bobsled in 2002, there were still tracks women couldn’t race on. They were barred from start houses in some places, forced to wait in tents before races and between runs.
They didn’t even get prize money at some races, presented with laundry detergent instead.
“You’re kind of like, 'Really?’” said Cheryl Simundson, Humphries’ mother.
“(Humphries) sees that she does have a voice and she does have a platform that, when used for the greater good, can make change,” Simundson said. “She sees other people making the change in their sports and says, 'I can do this for bobsleigh, too.’ I think it’s just evolved into what she has wanted to be.
“I know she does feel she has an obligation to make it better than what it was when she came in,” Simundson added. “That’s the essence of who she is.”
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'We deserve equal medal opportunities'
By 2014, Humphries was a two-time Olympic gold medalist. She also was a three-time medalist at the world championships, earning a bronze to go with her two golds.
She and Meyers Taylor, a two-time world champion and three-time Olympic medalist in two-man, pressed international bobsled officials to add a four-man race for women. Initially given the same excuses, they were eventually told they could race with the men in a mixed crew.
Humphries did that but continued to push for the women to have their own race. To make their point, women sliders from about a half-dozen countries organized a four-man event at the world championships about five years ago.
“I want more opportunities for women within this sport,” Humphries said. “… We deserve equal medal opportunities, just like our men. They get two chances to race every Games and they have done for my entire career. Why do I only get one? Because I'm a female? That's not fair.”
Still they were rebuffed.
“It was, 'Well, there's not enough teams. And so we can't make an Olympic event,’” Humphries said.
It was around this time, however, that the International Olympic Committee began making a concerted effort toward gender equity at the Summer and Winter Games. While fielding a four-man team might be a challenge for some countries, requiring an athlete pool that includes both drivers and brakemen, monobob was seen as more doable.
Any country that enters the two-man race can, in theory, also competes in monobob. It also provides an opportunity for countries that want to develop a sliding program, allowing them to start with only an athlete or two.
Monobob made its debut at last year’s world championships, and Humphries won the title. Meyers Taylor won the overall World Cup title this season.
“It's not what the men have … but at least we (both) have two opportunities to compete so we are equal in medal opportunities,” Humphries said. “What I would love to see, and what I hope will happen, whether it's in my career or lifetime is that men get monobob, too, and women also get four-man. That we increase the opportunity for athletes to be competing in multiple events in multiple stages.
“But I'm excited that we at least have equal medal opportunities now. That we have a second event that we're going to be able to compete in and be able to fight for something,” she added. “To see it kind of come full circle is super cool.”
Competing for Team USA
There was a time when Humphries feared she would only see monobob’s Olympic debut from afar.
In August 2018, six months after winning a bronze medal at the Pyeongchang Olympics, Humphries filed a formal complaint with Bobsleigh Canada, alleging verbal and emotional abuse by team coach Todd Hays. She said she had complained about Hays’ treatment throughout the Olympic season, to no avail.
Hays has denied the allegations.
“Kaillie is a very confident person. She knows what she wants, she knows what she needs and she goes out and gets it,” said her husband, Travis Armbruster, a former U.S. bobsledder. “To see her start to second-guess everything she does, second-guess herself as a person – she got told your entire team hates you, you’re an embarrassment to your country.
“You could see her question, 'Maybe I don’t have what it takes to win the gold medal. Maybe my mentality is wrong.’ Just a lot of verbalization that’s not her.”
Humphries sat out the 2018-19 season while an investigation was done. An investigator hired by Bobsleigh Canada ruled in September 2019 that there was insufficient evidence to support Humphries' allegations.
Humphries appealed to the Sport Dispute Resolution Centre of Canada (SDRCC), and an arbitrator ruled last July that the investigation had been “neither thorough nor reasonable.” A new investigation was ordered, this one to be done by an investigator hired by the SDRCC.
But as the 2019-20 season approached, and with Hays still Canada’s coach, Humphries decided she could no longer represent the country where she was born. She did so knowing it might mean she would have to sit the Beijing Olympics out.
The IOC requires athletes to be citizens of the countries they represent, and the process to become a U.S. citizen is laborious even when there’s not a pandemic.
“It was really hard, but I knew I wasn't safe and I wasn't going to be able to live life in that environment anymore,” Humphries said. “It's not just about competing anymore. My physical and mental health was on the line.”
It wasn’t only about her, either.
Coaches and federations have an inordinate amount of power over Olympic athletes, deciding who goes to what competitions, who gets funding, who gets access to facilities and training. And, directly or indirectly, who makes Olympic teams.
Speak up for yourself, and you could lose everything you’ve sweated and sacrificed for. Stay quiet, or simply stay, and you just might achieve your dreams.
If Humphries, a three-time Olympic medalist so respected she and brakeman Heather Moyes were chosen as Canada’s flagbearers for the closing ceremony at the 2014 Games, felt powerless, imagine how it would be for someone without her credentials? If she, by then in her mid-30s and with a strong support system, feared the repercussions of making a formal complaint, what chance would a 17- or 21-year-old athlete have?
“We are actually prouder of the things she stands up for and goes for and gets changed so it will make an impact on those coming up than we are of her winning the gold medals and the bronze medals and the World Cups,” said Cheryl Simundson, Humphries’ mother.
“We’re super proud of her. Super proud she stood up for what she believed and what was right and support her in everything,” Simundson added. “That’s going to be her greatest win.”
Because the investigation into her complaint is ongoing, Humphries asked the IOC for an exception to its citizenship requirement. Perhaps she could compete as a neutral athlete, as members of the Refugee Olympic Team do.
But the IOC said no.
Humphries could have found a country that would grant her citizenship without a second thought – what nation wouldn’t want a gold-medal favorite in two events wearing its flag? – but she only wanted to represent the United States in Beijing. She has lived here since 2016, and she and Armbruster married in 2019.
Plus, had her father made a different choice, she would have been an American long ago. Ray Simundson’s father was American, Cheryl Simundson said, and her husband had to decide at one point between Canadian and U.S. citizenships.
Bolstered by support from the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee and the USA Bobsled and Skeleton Federation, as well as members of Congress from both parties, Humphries asked U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services to expedite her case.
On Dec. 2, she was sworn in as a U.S. citizen. That weekend, she won both the monobob and two-man races in Altenberg, Germany. They were her first World Cup wins of the season.
But as Humphries realized long ago, it’s not the trophies she takes with her that matter but rather the legacy she leaves behind.
“I never set out for this to be the case. I would have never told you, when I first got into bobsled, this is where my story is going to unfold,” Humphries said. “It’s a very nice feeling – heartwarming – to know that I'm appreciated for more than just being good at a skill, for winning some medals and some races. That there's more within who I am as a person.
“And that I've stood up for more than just, and I hopefully will have affected more people, than just myself.”
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Olympics: Kaillie Humphries is fighting for gender equity in bobsled
