Olympic monobob star Kaillie Humphries inspired by Simone Biles
The double Olympic gold medallist representing USA highlighted Biles' strength to putting her mental health first at the Tokyo 2020 Games.
Bobsleigh
Kaillie Humphreys was inspired to priorotise her mental health by Simone Biles.
After switching allegiances from Canada to representing Team USA in 2019, the double Olympic champion faced a nervous wait for her new passport to come through before Beijing 2022.
"It wasn’t an easy decision to leave Team Canada to come over to Team USA and there was no guarantee I was even going to be able to be here," she tells Olympics.com. "There were plenty of nights, especially as the Olympics got closer, I only got my citizenship two months ago.
"I knew that the stance that I took, the decision that I made was correct. And I needed to put myself, my physical and my mental health at the forefront just for life in general ahead of sport.
"Watching Simone Biles do it (pull out of competition at Tokyo 2020) was so inspirational because I knew other athletes that are also at the forefront where performance is a huge aspect of what we love to do. We love to compete but it’s not everything about who we are and it’s so important that we feel safe in our environments and we’re able to put ourselves first and we know what it takes in order to be the best and we can stand up and we can say this is what we need regardless of if the world is watching or not."
Humphries has taken control in the first ever Olympic women's monobob after taking a commanding lead in the event after two rounds at the Yanqing National Sliding Centre.
“I’m super excited with it,” the USA representative said afterwards. “At the end of the day this is increasing participation worldwide.
“We’re seeing new countries here – Ukraine, the Dutch, countries that we’re not used to seeing as there’s less of a financial constraint on the federations.
“To know that women before me fought to even get the women’s two-man into the Olympics and I fought so hard to get this new event… women after me long past I’m gone are going to be able to do at least these two events which is huge and hopefully the sport will continue to grow.”
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