Monobob: Laura Nolte hopes to catch Kaillie Humphries at Beijing 2022

The women’s monobob is halfway through its Olympic Winter Games debut. And it’s already a game of catch Kaillie. Germany’s Laura Nolte is one of the women on the tail of American Kaillie Humphries at Beijing 2022.

Humphries won heats 1 and 2 on Sunday 13 February. Nolte finished second in the first run, and third in the second run.

The third run takes place on Monday 14 February.

How does Nolte rate her chances of repeating her gold at the Winter Youth Olympic Games Lillehammer 2016?

“It would be awesome, but Kaillie is doing a great job over there – she’s one second ahead of us,” she told Olympics.com.

“It will be very hard to catch her but it’s not over yet so we’re going all in tomorrow again.”

As for monobob featuring as a new Olympic event, Nolte says: “It's cool that women have a second event now.

“It’s very tricky to drive. We’re all not used to it. It’s fun to figure out how to drive it but it’s hard.”

But Nolte has history when it comes to adapting to sliding events at lightning speed. 

She piloted a bobsled for the first time in October 2015. Just four months later, she topped the podium at the Winter Youth Olympic Games.

It helped that she lived in the Ruhr region near the famous IBSF World Cup track in Winterberg. It also helped that her background was in athletics, lending her explosive speed at the start of her runs.

The ‘Flying Snow Dragon’ track in Beijing will surely be one to add the list of classic runs, with its world-first 360-degree loop.

On top of that challenge, Nolte must follow Germany’s gold medals in the men’s and women’s events in the luge and skeleton.

“It's cool to see the others win all the medals, but it also puts on a bit of pressure of course,” she said after heats 1 and 2 of the