{"id":13340,"date":"2016-01-11T09:00:55","date_gmt":"2016-01-11T17:00:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spijue.wpengine.com\/news\/humphries-makes-history-driving-a-4-woman-sled-against-men\/"},"modified":"2016-01-11T09:00:55","modified_gmt":"2016-01-11T17:00:55","slug":"humphries-makes-history-driving-a-4-woman-sled-against-men","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/sports\/humphries-makes-history-driving-a-4-woman-sled-against-men\/","title":{"rendered":"Humphries makes history driving a 4-woman sled against men"},"content":{"rendered":"

LAKE PLACID, N.Y. \u2014<\/strong> Kaillie Humphries drove her sled across the finish line Saturday, then raised her right hand and waved to the crowd of boisterous well-wishers as she slowed to a stop.<\/p>\n

Last place was hers, but so was history.<\/p>\n

The two-time Olympic women\u2019s champion from Canada \u2014 wearing socks bearing the phrase \u201cgirl power\u201d \u2014 became the first person to drive an all-female team against men in a four-person World Cup bobsled race. Humphries and sledmates Cynthia Appiah, Genevieve Thibault and Melissa Lotholz finished 17th in the 17-sled field at Mount Van Hoevenberg by a huge margin, and weren\u2019t disappointed in the least.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a lot of fun,\u201d Humphries said. \u201cFor us, step one was everybody getting in and being successful in a racing atmosphere. You\u2019ve got to start somewhere and we did that. At the end of it, it\u2019s sport. As high-performance as it gets, and I\u2019ve seen the highest peaks possible, it\u2019s sport and if you\u2019re not having fun, why are you doing it?\u201d<\/p>\n

Humphries finished 4.77 seconds \u2014 an absolutely enormous margin in a sliding sport \u2014 behind race winner Maximilian Arndt of Germany, who finished in 1 minute, 49.70 seconds and moved past countryman Francesco Friedrich for the series points lead. Russia\u2019s Alexander Kasjanov was second, 0.28 seconds off the pace in 1:49.98 and Justin Kripps of Canada took third in 1:50.07.<\/p>\n

For the U.S., Steven Holcomb was eighth, Nick Cunningham ninth and Codie Bascue 15th. Many of the sliders from other nations congratulated the Canadian women afterward, though Humphries \u2014 who has driven against men before, albeit with men also in her sled \u2014 didn\u2019t surprise anyone with her ability to get down the demanding Lake Placid track.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe\u2019s a great driver,\u201d Holcomb said. \u201cIt\u2019s just like driving a bigger car. It\u2019s not like she can\u2019t drive a truck. People make it a bigger deal than it should be. It\u2019s great. It\u2019s really good for the sport.\u201d<\/p>\n

The reason Humphries knew winning or contending wasn\u2019t an option Saturday has nothing to do with her skills. It\u2019s simple physics: The combined weight of her sled and crew was about 300 pounds less than most of the other sleds, meaning there was no way they could generate the speed and momentum the others could.<\/p>\n

The first 16 sleds in the field were separated by 2.10 seconds. The gap between Britain\u2019s John James Jackson in 16th and Humphries in 17th was an additional 2.67 seconds.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo be the first one is cool, but at the end of the day, I\u2019m not doing it to be the first one,\u201d Humphries said. \u201cI\u2019m doing it because it challenges myself to be a better pilot, to have something else to look forward to, something fun.\u201d<\/p>\n

Humphries and Elana Meyers Taylor of the United States have been the loudest voices in a quest to add a four-woman division. Men have two- and four-man racing, while women\u2019s races have always been with just two in the sled. Part of that is because few women, until now, have expressed interest in driving a four-person sled, and part of it is some nations simply don\u2019t have enough women on their teams to fill a bigger sled.<\/p>\n

But Humphries and Meyers Taylor were cleared to drive in men\u2019s races last year, a breakthrough they think could eventually help the women\u2019s side of the sport grow in a big way.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it\u2019s huge,\u201d Meyers Taylor, who\u2019s currently sidelined because of complications from a concussion, said of Humphries\u2019 showing Saturday. \u201cIt\u2019s something we\u2019ve needed to do and somebody had to take the step forward. Hopefully it starts showing that all-women crews can do this, all-women teams can do this, especially on one of the hardest tracks in the world like Lake Placid.\u201d<\/p>\n

Humphries said her goal is to see a four-woman division by the time she leaves the sport. The odds of that probably aren\u2019t great, but then again, no one two years ago would have thought something like what she did Saturday was realistic either.<\/p>\n

\u201cStep by step,\u201d Humphries said. \u201cWe\u2019re going to do what we can to show the world, show ourselves and show every girl out there that they can do whatever they set their hearts to.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

LAKE PLACID, N.Y. \u2014 Kaillie Humphries drove her sled across the finish line Saturday, then raised her right hand and waved to the crowd of boisterous well-wishers as she slowed to a stop. Last place was hers, but so was history. The two-time Olympic women\u2019s champion from Canada \u2014 wearing socks bearing the phrase \u201cgirl […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":6,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-13340","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13340","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13340"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13340\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13340"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13340"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13340"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=13340"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}