Kaysha Love wins women’s monobob world championship at Lake Placid
LAKE PLACID, N.Y. (AP) — Barely two years ago, Kaysha Love was finishing somewhere around last place in what would best be described as minor bobsled races.
She’s now the world monobob champion.
Love’s meteoric rise to the top of her sport is now complete, after finishing a victory in the women’s monobob — meaning just one person in the sled — world title race at Mount Van Hoevenberg on Sunday. It was the second gold for USA Bobsled and Skeleton so far at the world championships, after victory in the mixed team skeleton race on Saturday.
“Oh my gosh,” Love exclaimed shortly before she wrapped herself in the U.S. flag. “No, it still hasn’t clicked.”
Love’s four-run time over two days was 3 minutes, 57.82 seconds. Laura Nolte of Germany, the 2023 and 2024 world monobob champion, was second in 3:58.26, and Elana Meyers Taylor of the U.S. was third in 3:58.31.
“So close,” Meyers Taylor said as she embraced Nolte at the finish.
For second and third, yes. For the win, it was pretty one-sided at the end.
Nolte and Meyers Taylor are two of the best pilots in the world, and Love is someone who was in that position — trying to win a world title — for the first time. And all she did was throw down a run of 59.34 seconds, the best of anyone in the field Sunday and at the biggest moment, no less.
“I’m not going to lie and say I didn’t get in my head,” Love said. “But at the end of the day, I was also just so proud to be amongst the best in the world. And just the fact that I was still in the mix with these girls just made me kind of be at peace. Win, second, third or last, I’m here competing with the best in the world, in front of the people that I love, and that’s all that really mattered.”
Love becomes the seventh pilot to win a world championship for the United States, joining Stanley Benham, Lloyd Johnson, Arthur Tyler, Steven Holcomb, Meyers Taylor and Kaillie Humphries.
The 27-year-old Love sprinted in college at UNLV and grew up with dreams of making the Olympics in gymnastics before turning her attention to track. She got to the Olympics three years ago as a bobsled push athlete — and now might have earned a spot as one of the faces of Team USA going into next winter’s Milan-Cortina Games.
“Surreal,” she said.
Sunday’s gold is her second world championships medal, joining a bronze that she won pushing Humphries’ two-woman sled just two years ago at St. Moritz. That was around the time when Love began the switch from the back to the front of the sled and started the process of learning how to drive.
The early returns were awful. Fortunately, she was talked into ignoring those results. Shauna Rohbock, a former U.S. Olympic bobsledder and now a longtime coach in the American program, was Love’s sounding board in those early days. Love asked her after all those bad finishes if she had what it takes to drive.
“You have what it takes,” Rohbock told her.
A world championship proved Rohbock was right.
Love drove in six races during the 2022-23 season on the North American Cup tour, a mostly developmental circuit where hopefuls tend to learn if they can drive or not. She was last or next-to-last among the finishers of every race, finishing an average of 2.51 seconds behind the winning sled. That’s not close. That’s a lifetime in sliding.
A few months later, something just clicked. She was winning development races the following fall, got onto the World Cup circuit for the first time and — in something that rarely happens — won her debut monobob race.
That was only 15 months ago. She’s now the world champion, not to mention a serious Olympic contender for next winter regardless of whether the races are in the Italian Alps or back in Lake Placid.
Love was the leader after Saturday’s first two runs and had a third-run time Sunday afternoon of 59.49 seconds. That was a bit slower than the third-run times for both Nolte (59.41) and Meyers Taylor (59.46), but Love’s margin after Saturday was enough to ensure that she would hang onto the lead.
Her lead over Nolte was 0.17 seconds going into the final run. And she saved her best for last.
“I don’t even have the words to describe what this means,” Love said.
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AP Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/winter-oly
By TIM REYNOLDS
AP Sports Writer
