Kaillie Humphries returns to bobsled as a mom

Kaillie Humphries has been riding in bobsleds for 23 years, but this past weekend’s races marked a new experience.

Humphries, a three-time Olympic gold medalist, competed on the World Cup for the first since having her first child, son Aulden, on June 14.

Humphries and husband Travis Armbruster openly shared their year-plus IVF process, which included Humphries taking medication while competing in the 2022-23 season.

“This entire journey has been the hardest thing I have done in my whole life, but also the most rewarding and makes me the happiest I’ve ever been,” Humphries posted in her birth announcement. “I’m so in love and wouldn’t change a single thing.”

After taking maternity leave for the 2023-24 season, she rejoined the World Cup to open the 2024-25 campaign in Altenberg, Germany.

Humphries, 39, placed seventh in the monobob on Saturday and fifth in a two-woman race (with fellow mom Jasmine Jones as her push athlete) on Sunday.

“It’s a good starting point,” said Humphries, who previously won three world titles in Altenberg, arguably the most challenging track in the world. “I’m happy that my driving feels normal and is world class, and that I can easily earn my way back up and still perform. The driving of a sled is there, the equipment we have on the team is there. … It’s just the physical side, and that’s going to take two years coming back from having a kid.”

That will take Humphries right up to the 2026 Milan Cortina Games. She hopes to compete in a fifth Olympics, which would break the record for a female bobsledder.

Humphries used the words “baby steps” to describe her measured return to training from childbirth over the last six months.

She also called returning to competition so quickly “a bit of a forced early start,” but a necessary one to bid for the 2026 Olympic team.

She hasn’t lifted heavy weights in more than a year (besides pushing a 300-pound sled on ice). Going into Altenberg, she hadn’t done any explosive sprints longer than 10 meters. A bobsled push start can be about five times longer.

“I trained throughout pregnancy, but it was for fitness and general health and health of the baby and myself,” she said. “It wasn’t performance training.”

On Saturday, Humphries was first in the start order for the first race of the season. About three-quarters of the way into her opening push sprint, she felt her hamstring lock up.

“Running is one of the hardest things to do (postpartum), and it’s a vital part to our sport, and I feel like a baby giraffe,” she said.

Despite having the 19th-fastest start time, she had the seventh-fastest total run time of the 23-woman field. That’s a testament to Humphries’ driving ability.

Similarly on Sunday, Humphries and Jones converted the 12th- and 11th-fastest starts to the sixth- and third-fastest total run times.

“I’ll either just have to consciously only push to a certain percentage, maybe keep it at like 80, 85, or if I’m feeling OK, go all out,” she said. “That’s kind of what we did last week. If we’re going to learn from not wanting to pull body parts, I’ll just have to scale everything back a little bit for a couple weeks until I feel good, and then give it another test and try. I think that’ll be a lot of this season. I’ve never been in this position. I’ve never had a baby and returned.”

Humphries and Jones placed the highest of the four American two-woman sleds, one spot ahead of five-time Olympic medalist Elana Meyers Taylor, who returned last season after having her second boy. The U.S. is expected to qualify three sleds for the Olympics.

Aulden was among the spectators for the final run of Sunday’s race.

“My favorite thing is just his smile, his eyes, they’re so blue,” Humphries said before the World Cup season. “Every time I look at him — I know I’m biased — but I just think he’s the cutest baby in the entire world. I just feel so blessed to be able to be a mom, to have gone through pregnancy, for him to be healthy, me to be healthy.”

The entire family plans to travel the World Cup circuit this season.

“Travis, thankfully, has given up his career and his goals and dreams to allow me to follow mine, which is super cool and very supportive,” Humphries said, tearing up. “So it’s really great because now I get to live out my dream, and Aulden gets to spend time with his dad, and we kind of get to do this whole goal as a family.”

The target is squarely Milan Cortina. It could be a full-circle Games for Humphries. She traveled to the last Olympics in Italy in 2006 in the bobsled push athlete pool for Canada. She even marched in the Opening Ceremony.

Once the two-woman event began, she was not chosen to be one of the team’s two competing push athletes. Humphries then switched to driving and put her future Olympic destiny in her own hands.

She has since become the only female bobsledder to win three Olympic gold medals and broken the record for world championships medals (eight in two-woman, two in monobob).

Humphries and Armbruster, a former U.S. bobsledder, got married in 2019. She became a U.S. citizen in 2021. They hope to add to their family after the 2026 Olympics. Humphries hasn’t ruled out competing beyond that.

The impact she’s had is already visible on the World Cup. Four of the other five North American drivers in Altenberg were once push athletes in Humphries’ sled (Cynthia Appiah and Melissa Lotholz for Canada; Sylvia Hoffman and Kaysha Love for the U.S.).

“I hope that by (Aulden) coming over the next 15 months from now, and including the 2026 Games, he learns how to be passionate about something, he learns dedication and commitment,” Humphries said. “That he gets to see other people, and not just myself, but other people in bobsled that absolutely love what they do and that are committed, and that he gets to meet people from around the world, and that he gets to see other places around the world, too.

“It’s not often that you get real-life examples of working and striving and giving everything you have towards something.”

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