Christine De Bruin, of Canada, celebrates winning the bronze medal in the women's monobob at the 2022 Winter Olympics on Monday in the Yanqing district of Beijing.Mark Schiefelbein/The Associated Press
Great news, Canada. Kaillie Humphries just won a gold medal for the U.S. That means we are one day closer to never having to hear about this story ever again.
A former Olympic flag-bearer for Canada, Humphries ended her professional association with this country a few years back. It wasn’t an amicable separation.
But aside from the uniform, not much has changed. At 36, Humphries is still the dominant sliding-sports competitor we remember from the Games in Vancouver, Sochi and Pyeongchang.
She won gold in the inaugural monobob on Monday. After four runs, Humphries led by more than a second and a half. A second and a half in this sport is lapping the field. Once it was done, coaches made sure to wrap her in an American flag.
Canada’s Christine de Bruin took the bronze. Another American, Elana Meyers Taylor, grabbed silver.
The performance should be the story. Instead, we are forced to wrangle with how the performance came to be. It is impossible to talk about Humphries (or hear from her) without getting into her endless squabble with Bobsleigh Canada Skeleton.
She alleges she was ill-treated by her coach and the leadership there. They deny that happened. As in any bad divorce, the only thing everyone’s certain of here is their righteousness.
Whatever happened between Humphries and her former coach is a black box. One investigation cleared Bobsleigh Canada of wrongdoing, but an arbitrator judged it insufficient. A subsequent one continues.
Obviously, there’s a ton of bad blood here. That happens with all sorts of people who do all sorts of jobs. Maybe it’s happened to you.
But whereas you might also have quit, I’m going to guess you didn’t then renounce your country.
Again, fine. Were it me, I’d pick somewhere a little less like the Wild West instead. But, hey, whatever floats your citizenship boat.
One of many great things about being Canadian is that we’re not that hung up on “being Canadian.”
However, Humphries’s need to present this continuing workplace dispute in grandiose little-guy-versus-the-system terms got old a long time ago. She isn’t the little guy. She’s the system. Her ability to smoothly transition from one winning spot to another proves it.
Kaillie Humphries of the United States celebrates after winning gold in the women's monobob at the Beijing Olympics, on Feb. 14.THOMAS PETER/Reuters
All she’s done is swap membership in one elitist clique for another, and at no disadvantage to herself. She’s here, isn’t she? Nobody prevented her from doing exactly what she wanted.
“If I’m going to change nationalities, I have to want to represent that country,” she told The New York Times recently. “It’s not about what’s easy. It’s about what’s right, what’s fair, what’s just.”
Oh, spare us. Quitting one bobsleigh team to join another does not make you Cesar Chavez. Bobsledding is not a basic human right.
Feeling the need to publicly take sides in all disputes, including ones that we have no clue about, is a very modern affliction. It’s been avoided in this case.
The response of Canada writ large has been to ignore Humphries. We’ve had a lot of practice with athletic turncoats – Greg Rusedski, Lennox Lewis, Owen Hargreaves, et al. Each time someone skips out on us, Canada gets a little better at not caring.
We tell ourselves we should focus on the people who do want to wear the Maple Leaf, and we’ve become better at it. If there’s something about Monday we’re going to hang on to, it’s de Bruin’s bronze. That was the medal that mattered to Canada.
Sure, Humphries can’t help but go on and on and on about it every time a tape recorder is put anywhere near her. But no one’s being forced to listen. Once Beijing 2022 is done, this story will be as well.
On Monday, the beneficiary of it was the monobob. It’s the same bob you know from before, just less of it. One woman, one (budget) sled, one track.
Without this tepid scandal to give it some juice, this would not have been Olympic appointment viewing in two countries. So at least there’s that.
This Olympics has been light on controversy. Doping Russians and something about the size of the suits in ski jumping. Without scandals, it’s hard to string the two weeks into one cohesive narrative.
That’s one of about a dozen reasons that TV viewers have apparently tuned out these Games. So we’ll thank Humphries for doing her bit in that regard.
Canadian fans looking for payback will be disappointed. I can’t imagine why anyone would care so much. It’s not very Canadian to wish ill on strangers. And that’s what Humphries is now – a stranger.
I’m also sure America will rush to embrace a bobsleigh racer from Calgary, once they figure out which country Calgary is in and what, exactly, is a bobsled. This strikes you as one those careful-what-you-wish-for scenarios.
Humphries did seem delighted on Monday. Good for her. And now fare thee well on your journey to wherever it is you’re going. No need to write. We won’t be staying in touch.
Mostly, what the Humphries affair reminds you is that while Olympic gold medals are lovely, they don’t matter. They’re the sprinkles on top of our national sundae.
The thing that gives Olympic glory meaning is its connection to the country as a whole. The more intimate that connection – the more people feel they are part of the athlete’s journey – the more meaning it has.
Canada’s most beloved Olympians are not necessarily the greatest Olympic athletes. They are the competitors best able to establish a relationship with their fellow citizens.
Sever that connection, and this is just another person running around in Spandex, doing a sport you don’t really understand.
If it requires a specific lesson to remind us of what matters here – say, a well-known athlete leaving and then popping back up in the colours of another country – then maybe everyone can get what they need out of this, if not everything they want.
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