Americans Humphries Armbruster,
Jones 3rd at midpoint of bobsled race. Germany's Nolte, Levi lead
[February 21, 2026]
By TIM REYNOLDS
CORTINA D'AMPEZZO, Italy (AP) — Kaillie Humphries Armbruster saw the
leaderboard at the midpoint of the two-woman bobsled competition at
the Milan Cortina Games, not loving the fact that she's in third
place after the first two runs of the event.
That said, she knows nothing is decided.
“Anything can happen,” Humphries Armbruster said.
A pair of German sleds and one from the U.S. — the one driven by
Humphries Armbruster — have separated themselves a bit from the pack
after Friday night's first two heats of the event, with the final,
medal-deciding runs coming Saturday night.
Laura Nolte and Deborah Levi have the lead with a two-run time of 1
minute, 53.93 seconds. Lisa Buckwitz and Neele Schuten are second
for Germany in 1:54.11, while Humphries Armbruster and Jasmine Jones
— the first two-mom sled in U.S. Olympic bobsled history — are third
in 1:54.16.
“It's a very, very good feeling for the first night,” Nolte said.
Nolte, the World Cup points champion and reigning world two-woman
champion, also led at the midpoint of the women's monobob race as
well — then faltered a tiny bit in the fourth and final heat and
finished 0.04 seconds behind American veteran Elana Meyers Taylor,
who got her first Olympic gold medal.
It's a lesson Nolte remembers well. And the flip side of it rang
true on Friday.
Meyers Taylor is 12th after two runs of this race, out of medal
contention after she and Olympic rookie Jadin O'Brien went into a
big skid at the very top of the track in their second heat. They
kept bleeding time the whole way down, finishing 1.2 seconds — a
massive margin in sliding — off the lead.
“Sometimes, that's just how it goes,” O'Brien, a three-time NCAA
track champion at Notre Dame with eyes on the Los Angeles Games in
2028, said after her Olympic debut. “You're sliding on ice.”
Indeed, ice is slippery.
And even someone like Meyers Taylor, one of the best drivers the
sport has seen, can make a little mistake that turns into a big
problem.
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United States' Kaillie Armbruster Humphries, left, and Jasmine
Jones, right, arrive at the finish during a two women bobsled run at
the 2026 Winter Olympics, in Cortina d'Ampezzo, Italy, Friday, Feb.
20, 2026. (AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino)
“That's racing. That's sport. And I’ve been blessed
to have a lot of really, really good races in my career and a lot, a
lot of really good Olympic races and today wasn’t our day," said
Meyers Taylor, who had a special fan waiting for her at the finish —
former International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach, who
gave his former IOC intern a conciliatory hug after that second run.
“That was a devastating mistake, but we get to come back out here
and put two good runs together tomorrow and fight till the finish.”
Kaysha Love and Azaria Hill of the U.S. are right in the mix as
well, sitting fifth — four-tenths of a second out of the
bronze-medal spot.
“At the end of the day, I like to think about the controllables, and
I can’t control what they can do, but I can control what we can do,"
Love said. "And that gives me more comfort than hoping and praying
that somebody else messes up. We can execute, and drive, and pray
that that’s enough.”
It's not lost on Humphries Armbruster and Jones that they're making
history, being mothers and sledmates at the same time. Humphries
Armbruster has a son a few months away from turning 2, and Jones is
the mother of a 5-year-old.
Saturday is medal day, and for that sled, it could also be Mother's
Day.
“We're doing everything we can,” Jones said. “We're doing everything
humanly possible.”
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