At the bobsleigh and skeleton world championships, some moms might reach the podium

The latest addition to the list of amenities available to athletes at the bobsleigh and skeleton world championships is a room inside a lodge just down the hill from the finish line. There are some stuffed animals, tons of toys, Mickey Mouse colouring books and big boxes of crayons.

This is the family space. These days, it's a needed part of the sliding circuit.

There are four mothers expected to compete in the world championships that got officially underway Thursday in Lake Placid — U.S. skeleton athlete Kelly Curtis, Swiss bobsledder Nadja Pasternack, and U.S. bobsledders Elana Meyers Taylor and Kaillie Humphries. It's believed to be the highest number of mothers racing at a world championships.

"They haven't forgotten about us," Curtis said.

All four women missed time from competing during their pregnancies — for Meyers Taylor, it's been two absences, since she's a mom of two now. But the International Bobsleigh and Skeleton Federation, the governing body for those two sports, decided in recent years to protect women who wanted to add to their families by ensuring that they didn't lose their world rankings while taking the time off.

That means they were able to jump right back into World Cup racing when they were ready to do so — and not having to start from the bottom of the rankings means the path to qualify for the next Olympics in February 2026 became a bit easier for all of them.

"I wanted to be able to prove to myself that I could come back," said Humphries, the only three-time Olympic gold medallist in women's bobsleigh history. "I didn't want to feed into what I heard for the majority of my career, that having a baby ends your career. I didn't want that to be the case. And so, a big part for me was proving I