Kaillie Humphries Earns First Bobsled Win Of Season, With Elana Meyers Taylor In Second

Kaillie Humphries celebrates after winning the gold medal at the BMW IBSF World Championships on Feb. 22, 2020 in Altenberg, Germany. 

Kaillie Humphries won her first two-woman bobsled world cup race of the season Sunday in Igls, Austria, while U.S. teammate Elana Meyers Taylor reached the podium for the third competition in a row in taking second place.
Meyers Taylor, racing with Lake Kwaza, held the slightest of leads after the first run — .01 of a second — over Austria’s Katrin Beierl, with Humphries and Lolo Jones just .09 back in third. But Humphries, the defending world champion, came back with the fastest second run to win with a combined time of 1:47.07. Meyers Taylor ended .04 back, with Beierl .02 behind Meyers Taylor.
In total the top eight teams were separated by just .08.
The U.S. team delayed entry into the 2020-21 world cup season until this month. Humphries, who won two Olympic gold medals and a bronze with Canada before switching to the U.S. last season, opened the season by finishing sixth in Winterberg, Germany, seventh in Koenigssee, Germany, and then sixth again in St. Moritz, Switzerland.
A three-time Olympian and three-time medalist, Meyers Taylor took the 2019-20 season off while pregnant with her son Nico, who was born in February 2020. She returned to the world cup in Winterberg, finishing seventh, then was second in St. Moritz and third in Koenigssee.
Between the two-woman races, Meyers Taylor and Humphries have also been racing in monobob, the single-person bobsled event that will make its Olympic debut in 2022. After taking fifth in the opener in St. Moritz, Meyers Taylor finished second in the next two races, including one on Saturday. Humphries won the first two monobob races but sat out this weekend’s competition.
In the four-man competition earlier Sunday, Codie Bascue drove his sled to 13th place.
The U.S. men now return home, while the U.S. women turn their focus to the world championships, which begin Feb. 5 and run through Feb. 14 in Altenberg, Germany.