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Humphries, Moyse reclaim bobsleigh gold

Olympic winners from 2010 come from behind on final run
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Golden Again Kaillie Humphries, left, and Heather Moyse celebrate after successfully defending their Olympic women's bobsleigh title. Photo courtesy of Canadian Olympic Committee

Kaillie Humphries and Heather Moyse sat second through the first three runs of their Olympic women's bobsleigh title defence. They reclaimed the top step of the podium on their final trip down the Sanki Sliding Center track.

Humphries and Moyse repeated as gold medallists on Wednesday, Feb. 19 when they surpassed the American team of Elana Meyers and Lauryn Williams on the fourth and final run.

Meyers and Williams had recorded faster push times in their runs, but Humphries's superior driving ability wound up shining through in the end. Meyers had a 0.11-second lead to work with to start the fourth run, but made costly errors on her way to the finish and ended up one-tenth back.

It was an all-North American podium, as the U.S. duo of Jamie Greubel and Aja Evans claimed bronze, but with them being a full second back of the winning time, the race was really all about the battle between Humphries and Meyers.

The result means Kaillie Humphries is now the two-time reigning world champion, two-time reigning Olympic champ and winner of the last two World Cup titles.

The Canada 2 team of Jenny Ciochetti and Chelsea Valois finished 13th.

Men's two-man racing wrapped up on Monday, Feb. 17 with all three Canadian sleds in the top 10, and B.C.-trained pilot Justin Kripps was in the running for a medal right to the final run at the controls of Canada 3.

Kripps and partner Bryan Barnett sat fourth after three sliding sessions, just one-tenth out of the bronze medal position, but fell back to the field on the last run and placed sixth for the best Canadian result. Chris Spring and Jesse Lumsden were right behind their Canadian teammates in seventh place, while the Canada 1 duo of Lyndon Rush and Lascelles Brown placed ninth.

Bobsleigh competition wraps up this weekend with men's four-man racing. Final runs are scheduled for Sunday, Feb. 23 before the Closing Ceremony.

LUGERS DEJECTED

The Canadian luge team finished the Olympics with an unprecedented four top-five finishes, but none of them resulted in a medal, making the historic results a bit of a bitter pill to swallow.

After the solid results the team posted in individual races early in the Games, Canada went into the team relay on Thursday, Feb. 12 as one of the favourites for a medal, but came up one-tenth of a second short of the podium in another fourth-place finish — Canada's third of the Olympics.

Following the race, the team comprised of Alex Gough, Sam Edney, Tristan Walker and Justin Snith was understandably dejected.

"It sucks, it's terrible," Gough told media following the race. "To come fourth by a tenth and to know that we had it in our hands, and that each of us didn't have the runs we would have liked to, that we could have had it... I think we all feel that we let each other down."

Germany won the race to complete a sweep of the gold medals in luge, while the host Russians were the runners-up and Latvia claimed bronze. Afterwards, Canadian head coach Wolfgang Staudinger questioned whether Russian officials had tampered with the track's temperature, making it slower for seeded teams late on the start list like Canada and Austria.

Visit our Sochi Spotlight blog at www.piquenewsmagazine.com to read the full story about Staudinger's allegations.