Kaysha Love couldn’t be a backseat driver anymore.
Love, a Herriman native, was competing in her first Olympics in Beijing in 2022 as the brakeman for veteran Olympian Kallie Humphries. They teetered on the cusp of winning a medal as they entered their final run. The starting push off was strong, one of the fastest in the field. Ultimately, though, miscues on the track derailed them, and they finished seventh.
“We definitely, in my perspective, did our job at the start to set ourselves up for the best outcome possible,” Love, 28, said. “And then to come down in seventh place was just a really hard pill for me to swallow.
“And so I just kind of started to recognize that the drivers have a little bit more of a say in how their career, how their result, how the culture of the team is operating.”
Four years later, Love is back in the Olympics. This time she’s in the driver’s seat, and not just in the monobob and two-person sled — two events she’s a medal favorite for in Italy. She’s also working to reshape the culture of the USA Bobsled team from the inside.
(Mark Schiefelbein | AP) Kaillie Humphries and Kaysha Love, of the United States, slide during the women's bobsleigh heat 1 at the 2022 Winter Olympics, Friday, Feb. 18, 2022, in the Yanqing district of Beijing.
It started by bringing in two of her favorite people: her fiancé, Hunter Powell, and her longtime friend and bridesmaid Azaria Hill.
Love met both while running track for UNLV.
Hill grew up around Olympians — her mother won gold and two silvers in the 4x400 relay, two of those alongside her aunt, and her father earned a boxing silver in 1984.
When Hill’s track career ended in 2023, Love convinced her to attend a bobsled dryland camp. It ended up being to Love’s benefit. The brakemen — or pushers — for the Team USA bobsled teams are selected by a committee with limited input from the pilots. Still they saw fit to pair Hill with Love.
Jasmine Jones was paired with Humphries, a three-time gold medal winner. Elena Meyers Taylor, a five-time Olympic medal winner, was matched with Jadin O’Brien, a selection that triggered a lawsuit from alternate Emily Renna. Like Hill, O’Brien took up bobsled within the last couple years.
In addition to being the jet pack for the two-woman sled, brakemen also typically are the main mechanics for that sled and the monobob, taking care of its maintenance and transportation.
“I’m really happy to be competing with Kaysha, being on her sled, being a brakewoman, given that she was the one who did introduce me to the sport,” Hill, 27, said. “I feel like our bond and our friendship definitely translates over to the bobsled track. And I think you’re going to really see that when we go out there and push.”
Love had to apply more elbow grease to get her fiancee on the track.
They met at a conference championship track meet, according to Love. Powell, a decathlete for Colorado State University, approached her and a group of her friends, told her she was beautiful, wished her good luck and walked away. A couple weeks later, Love reached out to him on Instagram. Their wedding is set for September with Hill and another bobsled pilot, Riley Tejcek.
After Powell retired as a decathlete, Love noticed his workouts mirrored those of a bobsledder. She said she begged him to attend a Slide to Glory tryout at the University of Utah.
“I was very resistant to [it], but she talked me into it,” Powell, 29, said. “I’m so thankful that she did, as it’s the coolest thing in the world. I’m traveling the world for the first time in my life, chasing the dream with the woman I love and my best friend. It doesn’t get better than that.”
Powell will compete in the four-man event for pilot Kris Horn along with Carsten Vissering and Utah Valley University student Caleb Furnell. The quad — albeit with Ryan Rager replacing Vissering — gained unwanted notoriety last month when the three brakemen slipped upon their attempted entry during a World Cup race in St. Moritz, Switzerland, and sent Horn down the track alone.
The Love-Powell connection has drawn comparisons to another famous Olympic couple with Utah ties: Paralympian Hunter Woodhall and gold-medal long jumper Tara Davis-Woodhall. Love said she knows Woodhall from their days of competing in high school track meets.
“It’s really fun that people are making the summer and winter Hunter comparison,” Love said.
The Woodhall-Davises are known for their positivity. Love said she’s trying to instill more of that into USA Bobsled, including going sledding with Snoop Dogg and doing her signature snap with Flavor Flav.
It was a change she said she realized was necessary in Beijing, which is also when she realized she needed to be in the driver’s seat.
“During those 2022 Games, I wasn’t a huge fan of the way USABS culture was,” she said. “I think that there was a lot of great things, but there was a lot of things that I felt like needed improvement. And that comes from just having the staff, the leadership, the pilots, just all of those people kind of on the same page. And I wanted to be part of that same page to try to help change and create a better atmosphere for our program.”
The 2026 Olympics should be a good litmus test. Love will compete in monobob Sunday and Monday. She is the reigning world champion while Humphries and Meyers-Taylor, who are also entered, are the defending gold and silver medalists, respectively. The two-women heats are set for Friday and Saturday.
Men’s four-man heats are among the last events in the Olympics. They are scheduled for Saturday and Sunday.
“My expectations are for me to just go out there and perform and to just be the athlete that I know I can be and be able to just showcase what myself and Azaria already have been working so hard for,” Love said.
“And if we do that, I know that we have the power to be able to come home with not one but two gold medals.”