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American bobsledder Kaillie Humphries has already won three Olympics gold medals in her standout career. Back-to-back wins for her birth country of Canada in the two-woman event in 2010 and 2014, plus another gold, after a contentious, stressful battle to switch national allegiances, for the United States, in the inaugural driver-only monobob event in Beijing. So as well as anyone, Humphries can paint a picture of an ideal Olympic run down the refrigerated track in Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy, in February.
“The sled should look smooth,” says Humphries, 40, during an interview from San Diego, where she lives with her husband, former USA bobsledder Travis Armbruster, and their son, Aulden, who will turn 20 months old in mid-February. “It should look effortless. You shouldn’t see a lot of sideways movement. That’s usually a Kaillie Humphries special. Especially when the pressure gets big. I can drive the heck out of a sled better than anybody else in the entire world. So my goal is to be good enough at the start, then crush them in the driving on the way down.”
Humphries thought she might miss her chance to add to her Olympic legacy, as she moved forward with plans to start a family with Armbruster after Beijing. She had tried to get pregnant naturally prior to those Games, but in 2021 Humphries was diagnosed with stage IV endometriosis, an often painful condition in which tissue that is similar to the inner lining of the uterus grows outside the uterus.
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Endometriosis can cause fertility struggles, so in the summer of 2022, Humphries began IVF treatments. Three transfers did not result in a baby, but in August 2023, with the qualification period for Milano Cortina fast approaching, she decided to keep trying. “It got to the point of, I’m going to continue down this path, and it may cost me a future Olympics,” she says.
A month later, she got pregnant. Humphries…
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