Kaysha Love (left) celebrates with Kaillie Humphries (right) during the two-woman bobsled event of the Olympic Winter Games Beijing 2022 on Feb. 19, 2022 in Yanqing, China.
Kaysha Love might have only started bobsled at the end of 2020, but after an impressive first season with Team USA, the brakewoman has proven she is here to stay.
The 25-year-old began the sport after transitioning from track and field, where she was a collegiate sprinter at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas.
Starting in the back of the sled as a way to learn the ins and outs, she earned a spot on the national team after having competed in only six total races. The Olympic Winter Games Beijing 2022 saw her and her teammate, Kaillie Humphries, taking seventh overall in the 2-woman event. During those Games, Love decided she wanted to try moving from the back of the sled to the front.
“My coach mentioned that there was a driver school happening a couple of days after we get back from the Games,” Love remembered. Upon returning from Beijing, the Herriman, Utah native headed to Lake Placid, New York, to experience the bobsled from the driver’s seat.
“It was the greatest experience,” she said.
As a self-described control freak and perfectionist, she loved having total control over her destiny. “In the backseat, it’s more of a trust factor.”
Going down that track in the Adirondacks — a track she had done many times before — was a different experience from the front.
“In the back of the sled, you don’t see anything, so to actually see everything coming at you was an entirely different perspective,” said Love. “And it was one that I really enjoyed.”
At the beginning of her second season, Love was dedicated to being a pilot, trying to earn her qualification from the International Bobsled and Skeleton Federation (IBSF). The requirement is called 5, 3, 2, she explained. “You need five races on three different tracks within two years to qualify and race on a world cup circuit,” Love said. That is her goal for the coming months, but one she will balance with her brakeman duties.
“I’m already three races in,” she said about her progress as a driver, “and I’m hoping in March, I will be able to compete as a pilot to be able to fulfill that 5, 3, 2.”
Until then, she continues to dominate from the back of the sled, getting named to the U.S. national team as a brakewoman for the second season in a row. “I’ve been doing both brakeman and pilot duties, bouncing back and forth between the front seat and the back,” she admitted.
