American women capture silver, bronze in bobsled

KRASNAYA POLYANA, Russia -- They called it the Battle Royale. Kaillie Humphries and Elana Meyers spent part of the summer training alongside one another, getting ready to spend this winter battling each other.

They shared a coach. They shared philosophies. They shared knowledge. They could not share the Olympic gold medal.

It belongs to Humphries.

Canada's team of Humphries and Heather Moyse are again queens of Olympic women's bobsledding, rallying past the U.S. duo of Meyers and Lauryn Williams last night to win gold at the Sochi Games.

It's the second straight Olympic title for Humphries and Moyse, and it wasn't decided until the final moment of the competition -- then only by a 10th of a second.

"We knew it was going to be this way," Humphries said after becoming the first women's bobsledder to drive to back-to-back Olympic golds.

This season the World Cup title went to Humphries, by a single point. So did the Sochi title, by a sliver of the time it takes to blink.

"Anytime you come that close and you can taste it, if you don't get the result, it hurts a little bit," Meyers said. "But Kaillie just beat me."

Meyers, of Douglasville, Ga., became the first U.S. women's bobsledder to win multiple Olympic medals, this one added to the bronze she captured as a brakeman in Vancouver. Williams, of Rochester, Pa., became the first U.S. woman and fifth athlete overall to win medals in different sports at both the Summer and Winter Games, her silver here added to a sprint relay gold from London in 2012 and a silver from the 100 meters in Athens in 2004.

"I didn't come here to make history," Williams said after what could very well be her final bobsled race, just six months after she gave the sport a try. "I came here to help Team USA and I feel like I did. It wasn't about history for me. It wasn't about the medal for me. It's all about the journey."

Jamie Greubel of Newtown, Pa., paired with brakeman Aja Evans of Chicago to grab the bronze in USA-2, giving the U.S. two Olympic women's bobsled medal winners for the first time.

Not long after the medal ceremony, all three U.S. teams -- including Lolo Jones of Des Moines, Iowa, and Jazmine Fenlator of Wayne, N.J., who were 11th in USA-3 -- were arm in arm, celebrating that two medals are America-bound.

And to Jones, seeing Williams -- a fellow track athlete turned bobsledder -- etch her spot in Olympic history meant just about everything.

"She's like a Jesse Owens. I hope she just inspired a whole country," Jones said. "When I get home I hope she's a household name. Her transformation was the most brilliant thing I've ever watched."