Humphries and Lotholz race to bobsleigh silver in St. Moritz
After an extremely close women’s bobsleigh competition, Kaillie Humphries and Melissa Lotholz left St. Moritz with a World Cup silver.
The world’s top sliders met in St. Moritz for the fifth stop on the World Cup circuit. Two-time Olympic champion Humphries was back with Lotholz, after teaming up with Cynthia Appiah in Winterberg last weekend.
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Kaillie Humphries and Melissa Lotholz from Canada speed down the course during the women’ two-man bobsled World Cup in St. Moritz, Switzerland, Saturday, Jan. 21, 2017. (Urs Flueeler/Keystone via AP)
The pair kicked off the competition with an opening run of one minute 8.35 seconds. Their time was good enough to edge out two American sleds for the lead position, but with only a 0.03s advantage, the pressure was on in the second run.
The Canadians brought their A game to the final heat, lowering their time to 1:07.80. However an impressive run by Americans Elana Meyers Taylor and Briauna Jones allowed their pair to move from third to first place with a combined time of 2:16.14s.
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For their Canadians their silver medal was hard to stomach after realizing they were only one hundredth outside of first place.
“I don’t think I have actually ever lost a race by one-hundredth of a second before. I asked the girls ‘is it really bad that I’m mad.’ I think I’d rather lose by more than one-hundredth of a second,” laughed Humphries.
However, at the end of the day the Canadians were still happy with their silver medal performance.
“This stings a bit, but we still came away with the silver. At the end of the day, this is great for women’s bobsleigh. It is great to see the competition on the women’s side so tight. Everyone is pushing so good, and if you aren’t fully on it on the day, you aren’t going to win,” added Humphries. “We will take the positives from this race and not dwell on losing by such a small margin.”
The United States’ second team of Jamie Poser Grubel and Lauren Gibbs completed the podium with a combined time of 2:16.19s.
