When the behind-the-scenes cameras at the Whistler Sliding Centre caught Canada's Kaillie Humphries and Heather Moyse before their final two runs in the Olympic women's bobsleigh races on Wednesday evening (Feb. 24), the two sliders were bouncing and beaming at each other with music piping into their ears, engaging in what Moyse called a little bit of "dance therapy."
The pair led the women's bobsleigh event with a stellar performance in the first round of racing, posting two track-record times in their first two runs in the four-run event and smashing through the Whistler track's start records like they've done throughout the season in winning multiple World Cup medals.
Humphries and Moyse opened up a lead of 13 hundredths of a second over Erin Pac and Elana Meyers of the U.S., and about 40 hundredths of a second over Germany's Cathleen Martini and Romy Logsch, sitting third, and their Canadian teammates Helen Upperton and Shelley-Ann Brown in fourth.
But they were trying not to think about that at the top of the track these technical-minded sliders tried to keep their focus on the job they needed to do on the track, the "same job we've done all season," as Moyse said, so they bopped to the music to take their minds off the tension.
The bright Black Eyed Peas pop song "I Gotta Feeling" is in the mix with lyrics pledging a "good, good night" along with Kesha's "Tick Tock" and the song "Big Green Tractor," which Humphries laughingly dedicates to Moyse.
Having switched to driving after narrowly missing out on a spot as a brakeman in the 2006 Games a spot she lost to Moyse Humphries is still a relatively new pilot, with a tendency to be heavy handed, she said. Sometimes when she finishes runs, her coaches chastise her to drive her sled less like a tractor and more like a Ferrari.
Little sign of that on Wednesday night, as Humphries and Moyse delivered a "good, good night" indeed to the screaming crowds in the Whistler Sliding Centre. They blasted out of the gate with their third run, tying the start record they set the previous day and setting a yet another track record with their time of 53.23 seconds.
And then they delivered the gold in the dramatic final heat, where Martini and Logsch stunningly crashed out of medal contention a crash the talented sliders were able to walk away from, though Logsch fell out of the speeding sled to drift down the track by herself, almost starfish-shaped and Upperton and Brown delighted the roaring crowds by charging into the silver-medal spot.
"I don't think I ever got this far in the dream," Moyse marvelled in a post-race press conference, when asked how the reality of becoming Olympic champions compared to the vision.
"I can predict I'll be bawling on the podium," she added, beaming.
"I know it's happened. It just hasn't sunk in yet," Humphries said of their golden finish, adding that she felt "a bit of relief" at the end. "It was nice to know I had four consistent runs, and I was nice to know we did it, we did it together."
Hitting the track right after Martini's crash, Upperton and Brown threw down the fastest time of the final heat, and then watched in delight and disbelief as Pac and Meyers dropped behind them in the total time.
Upperton collapsed to the ground when she realized the Americans had fallen back, and then she and Brown faced the finish-line crowd and pumped their hands to egg on the roaring audience in their cheers for the final run of Humphries and Moyse, which cemented the Canadians' triumphant one-two finish.
Asked about her brilliant final run, Upperton said, "I didn't want to play it safe. I love this track, and I love going fast, and I wanted to put it all out there and not regret anything."
Upperton and Brown were thinking about other Canadian Olympians before their smashing final runs, where they posted the top time in the fourth and final heat to claim that sparkling silver medal with a bang.
Upperton envisioned the performances by 2010 Olympic medal-winning mogul skiers Alexandre Bilodeau and Jenn Heil who popped up at the Whistler Sliding Centre finish line to cheer delightedly as the Canadians collected their victory flowers and skeleton champion Jon Montgomery.
"They went down the track, and they weren't the last ones, they weren't in the lead, and they did their best performances possible I thought, 'That's what we want to do. If we do our best, then we can walk away, no matter where we finish, and say that was it, we did everything we could do,'" Upperton said, thinking, "That's how I want to feel, that's what I want to do today."
Brown was thinking about Canada's cherished speedskater and flagbearer Clara Hughes, who dug deep in Wednesday afternoon's 5,000-metre race and eventually captured a bronze medal with her stirring performance. Brown didn't see where Hughes finished in the standings, because she needed to leave for her own race, but she saw enough to be inspired.
"Sometimes when you see athletic excellence, and it is emotional all by itself, you could see she left her complete self on the ice. That is what I wanted to do, leave my complete self on the ice, and give it all, everything I had to Canada, everything I had to Helen, and just go for it," Brown said.
It's been a long journey for the Canadian teams to climb to the top of the Olympic podium, with some heartbreaking misses and plenty of drama littering the route there. Upperton and Moyse missed out on a bronze medal in the Torino Games by just five hundredths of a second, where Humphries was a disappointed alternate brakeman for the team, and that was in Upperton's mind too on Wednesday night.
"The three of us are all on it together, and Shelley, it's her first Olympics and she just is so ready, I knew she was ready. The four of us did such a great job," Upperton said.
When Upperton hugged Moyse at the finish dock, she thinks she said to Moyse, "'It can't be better than this. This is the best. It doesn't get any better than one-two at home.'"
"I believed in myself, and Kaillie believed in herself, and everybody believed in both of us, including all of our awesome brakemen," Upperton said, describing her feelings of joy and good fortune at being a Canadian athlete in this period with the support they've received from so many people, including key assistance from Own the Podium, Bobsleigh Canada Skeleton and the non-profit B2ten athlete support organization.
"So many people own a piece of this medal, I wish I could break it into a thousand pieces and give it to all the people that helped us," she told TV cameras.
Humphries and Moyse won with their total time of three minutes, 32.28 seconds, with Upperton and Brown 0.85 back in 3:33.13, followed by Pac and Meyers in 3:33.40.
German titan Sandra Kiriasis, the champion and silver medallist in the last two Olympics and eight-time World Cup overall winner, finished fourth place and professed to be infuriated with her driving.
"I am not upset about fourth place, but about myself," she said. "The Canadians ran a good line, I just went in stupidly."
