Beijing Olympics
2022 Olympics: Team USA wins gold and silver in women's monobob
Newly minted U.S. citizen Kaillie Humphries won the gold medal in the women's monobob event at the Beijing Olympics on Monday, earning her third gold medal and her first for Team USA. Humphries won her first two golds as the star bobsledder for Canada, but she moved to the U.S. in 2016, married former U.S. bobsledder Travis Armbruster in 2019, and was granted her U.S. citizenship on Dec. 2, 2021.
"I want to ... give back to a country that has adopted me, that has given me a longer career, and has given me a safe place in order to compete," Humphries said after notching an insurmountable lead after two of the four runs. "I'm very honored that the USA has backed me the way that it has."
Humphries is only the second Winter Olympian to have won gold medals for two different countries, joining short-track speedster Viktor Ahn, USA Today reports, citing Olympic historian Bill Mallon. Ahn won three golds for South Korea in Turin in 2006 and then took another three golds at the 2014 Sochi Games as a member of Russia's team.
U.S. bobsledder Elana Meyers Taylor won the silver in the monobob event, her fourth medal and third silver. She now holds the record for most medals in USA Bobsled history. Meyers Taylor recently emerged from nearly a week in isolation after testing positive for COVID-19, and she said she still wasn't feeling in top form on Sunday. But her final run pushed her past Canada's Christine de Bruin, who won the bronze medal.
The first- and second-place women's monobob finishes put Team USA third in the rankings, with seven golds and 14 medals overall, behind No. 1 Norway and second-place Germany.