She’s 28, from Utah, and the reigning world champion in monobob (that’s the single-person bobsled event, for those of us whose only reference point is Cool Runnings). But before bobsled, Kaysha Love spent 12 years as a Level 10 gymnast until injuries pushed her to track and field at UNLV, where she set Utah state records and earned All-American honors as a sprinter.
The Olympics had always been the dream. Love grew up in an athletic family where everyone played college basketball or volleyball, and Olympic viewing was basically a family tradition. Then during her senior year at track nationals, a bobsled coach approached her and basically told her she was doing the wrong sport.
“I remember just thinking that he was crazy,” Love says. “I had been doing track for the last eight years.”
The coach kept pushing. Everything she learned in track would transfer to bobsled. Love, whose entire knowledge of the sport came from Cool Runnings, told him that’s all she knew. His response? Then she was perfect, because that movie taught her she belonged in this space and that track athletes make incredible bobsledders.
So she went to Lake Placid for a rookie camp. “I went up there [to Lake Placid] and absolutely just fell in love with the idea that I could become an Olympian. And about a year later, I ended up becoming an Olympian.”
The timeline is insane (in the best way possible) when you think about it. Love went from her first bobsled push to the 2022 Beijing Olympics in roughly 12 months, competing as a push athlete with only seven bobsled races under her belt.
Her approach involves faith and leaning on her teammates. “I’m a God-fearing woman. And at the end of the day, I know that God has a plan for me, and everything that happens, whether good, bad, nothing is bad. Everything is a lesson.”