Olympic Bobsledder Wins Gold After Being Cut Days Before Debut

Four days before her first Olympic competition, 20-year-old Kaillie Humphries heard the words every athlete dreads: "You're the one odd man out."

The bobsled athlete was devastated. Her parents had already flown to Italy to watch her compete, and she'd trained for years to reach that moment. She nearly quit the sport entirely.

Instead, Humphries made a different choice. She invested eight years learning to become a bobsled driver, refusing to let others define her limits.

At the 2010 Vancouver Olympics, coaches told her it wasn't her time to shine. Others had put in more work, they said. Humphries had a simple response: "Why can't it be me?"

She won Olympic gold that year. Four years later, she became the first and only female athlete to successfully defend an Olympic gold medal in women's bobsled.

The Canadian-born athlete shared her journey Tuesday with students at Hays High School in Kansas, where her niece attends. Now competing for Team USA, Humphries has won six Olympic medals across six Olympic Games: three gold and three bronze.

Her path wasn't straightforward. After winning bronze for Team Canada in 2018, Humphries faced conflicts with a coach over safety concerns. The team forced an early retirement on her.

She switched to Team USA and started from scratch. That meant buying her own $70,000 bobsled and going through the citizenship process while other American Olympians were already citizens.

Humphries also helped create the monobob, a new women's Olympic event challenging gender inequality in the sport. In 2022, she won Team USA's first Olympic gold medal in the event.

Why This Inspires

Standing on the podium singing the national anthem in 2022 held special meaning for Humphries. The coaches who once declared her career finished were watching. "That felt really nice," she told the students.

Her message to young athletes focuses on what they can control: the daily work, nutrition, sleep, recovery, and mental preparation. Some days are easy, she explained, and others require pushing through when you'd rather take a break.

Success doesn't happen overnight. It happens through consistent effort on both great days and hard ones.

Humphries plans to eventually coach and pass her knowledge to the next generation. For now, she's balancing family life with her athletic career, recognizing that priorities shift day by day.

The students got to see her gold medals up close and ask questions about overcoming obstacles that could have ended her dreams.