Olympics 2022 — At her fourth Games, bobsledder Kaillie Humphries has a new country — and a new mission

KAILLIE HUMPHRIES STANDS in the middle of Canada Olympic Drive in Calgary, tears welling in her eyes. As she bends to retrieve her bobsled equipment from the middle of the street, she wonders how her career has come to this. It’s the summer of 2018, five months after her bronze medal performance at the Pyeongchang Olympics and one month after she sent emails to Bobsleigh Canada Skeleton and the Canadian Olympic Committee alleging emotional and mental harassment by her head coach, Todd Hays.

“So, this is what you get when you stand up and say, ‘I don’t feel safe in my environment’?” Humphries asks her mom, Cheryl Simundson, as they pick up pairs of spikes and sled runners, push handles and helmets, equipment Humphries purchased and used to win three Olympic medals — two of them gold — for Team Canada. Simundson doesn’t know how to respond. Her daughter has always been strong-willed and fiercely committed to her goals, and she knows those tears mean Bobsleigh Canada is in for a fight.

“That was the beginning of the worst of it,” Simundson says. “When I saw Kaillie’s life tossed like garbage into the middle of the road.”

Earlier that afternoon, a rep from Bobsleigh Canada had called to inform Humphries that the shipping container carrying the team’s Olympic equipment from South Korea had arrived in Calgary. At the time, Humphries was living with her boyfriend, former U.S. bobsled athlete Travis Armbruster, in San Diego, but visiting her parents at their home in Signal Hill, about 15 minutes from Canada Olympic Park.

“They told her she had 45 minutes to pick up her gear,” Simundson says. “But they didn’t have the decency to let her into the building. After everything she had done for Bobsleigh Canada, after her third Olympic medal, her life was…