Monobob Champion Kaysha Love Reflects on the Coach Behind Her Success: Brian Shimer

Kaysha Love remembers her first track walks as a bobsled pilot on the IBSF World Cup tour. She only had one season under her belt in the driver’s seat — after spending her first two seasons in the sport as a brakewoman. And she had never heard the terms that USA Bobsled head coach Brian Shimer was using to describe the curves and line along the track in La Plagne, France.

“I got overwhelmed and really scared,” remembers Love.

She was embarrassed to admit to Shimer that she had no idea what he was talking about. But she confessed anyway. Instead of “making me feel stupid,” he reassured her.

“You know what, you’re going to be all right, Kaysha,” he told her. “You have a talent, and we’re going to figure it out.”

Then he “brought down his level of knowledge and put it in a way that I could understand it,” she says. Love went on to win the monobob at that World Cup, and she finished fourth in women’s two-man bobsled.

Since then, Love, 28, has picked up bobsled lingo and won two more monobob World Cups, and finished on the podium in three others. She has also made the podium in two two-man competitions. This past winter, she won the monobob world champion crown. She credits Coach Shimer — who piloted USA-1 to an Olympic bronze medal in four-man bobsled at the Olympic Winter Games Salt Lake City 2002 — with helping her get there.

“I do my best when I feel the most supported,” Love says, “and to watch him support all of the athletes and pilots in the best way that fits them, he definitely coaches to our language, not us adjusting to him. I think that’s what makes him one of the best coaches and made him one of the best pilots when he was bobsledding.”

From Herriman, Utah, a suburb of Salt Lake City, Love was a gymnast as a child and reached Level 10, the highest level in USA Gymnastic’s Junior Development Program. Sidelined by injuries, she switched to track and field in high school and earned 16 state sprint and high jump titles. She then became a star sprinter at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas, graduating in 2021.

Encouraged by a bobsled coach who saw her sprinting at a college meet, Love attended a USA Bobsled rookie camp in October 2020, then was invited back for the push championships the following summer. Like most rookies, Love was terrified her first run down the bobsled track.

“I wasn’t sure I was cut out for the sport,” she says. “It just took two more runs, and after that, I was like, yep, this sport is epic.”

Love was such a good push athlete, getting the bobsled off the start fast, that she was named to the 2022 U.S. Olympic Team after competing in only a handful of world cups. Shimer credits both her athletic prowess and her experience as an athlete in individual sports — and her upbringing — with her early success.

“When things go wrong, there’s no one else to point a finger at other than the one you’re looking at in the mirror,” he says. “That teaches you to really focus on what you can control.”

As for her upbringing, Love’s mom always told her daughter to “suck it up, buttercup” when life did not go her way.

“I really liked that about Kaysha,” continues Shimer. “Even when things aren’t going right, she is not one to just give up. She’s going to do what it takes to get the job done.”

The Olympic Winter Games Beijing 2022 did not go as Love had hoped. She was brakewoman for Kaillie Humphries-Armbruster, who at the time was a three-time Olympic medalist and reigning world champion, and the duo struggled on the Beijing track, finishing seventh. The experience galvanized Love’s desire to move into the bobsled pilot’s seat — a leap she had hoped to make since starting bobsled the previous year.

But that move is never easy. It typically takes bobsled pilots four to six years to start earning consistent results on the world cup — in part because they only get a few runs each week on every track, and each run is less than a minute long.

As Shimer points out, “You get less than 10 minutes each week to perfect your sport.”

It’s not for everyone. But in Kaysha, he saw an athlete who could successfully push through each challenge.

One of the first skills that Love had to master as a pilot was how to push the bobsled off the starting line. Brakemen push the sled from behind; pilots push a retractable bar that sticks out from the side of the sled. It requires a different technique.

So Love went to the Ice House at Mt Van Hoevenberg in Lake Placid to practice on the new indoor push start track. She was struggling to understand how to use her hips and body most effectively while pushing from the side of the sled. So Shimer moved to the front of the sled and told to try again.

“I’m like, ‘Shimer, I will push you over,’ and he’s telling me I won’t push him over because I’m not using any of my force,” Love recalls.

Sure enough, she tried pushing the sled again and “nothing happened, the sled didn’t move, nothing,” she says.

But it gave her a couple of cues. With Shimer still standing in front of the sled, Love tried again with a slightly different technique but still wasn’t able to push the sled. Again, Shimer encouraged her to use her hips and drop into the bar, giving Love even more cues.

On her next attempt, she pushed Shimer over and sent him sliding down the start track. Love was stunned. And upset.

“I just killed Shimer!” she thought. “This is not good!”

She ran down to the track to see if he was all right, and he was laughing. “That’s what I’m talking about!” he told Love. “That’s what I wanted to see.”

The story illustrates how invested Shimer is in his athletes.

“He really puts his heart, his soul, his entire energy into making sure that his athletes are successful,” explains Love. “Sometimes he has to be my therapist, sometimes my sled mechanic. To recognize how hard he works really put it in perspective for me. He really cares about me as a person and an athlete.”

For his part, Shimer is thankful that his athletes listen to him and trust him.

“It puts a lot of pressure on me,” he says with a laugh. “I’m like, ‘Oh my gosh, I hope everything I told her in terms of coaching was the right choice.’”

One day, Love’s friend and bobsled teammate, Riley Tejcek, was joking around with Shimer, telling him what a cool coach he is.

“Sometimes when I want to break down and cry, or I want to quit, I come to you, and you’re my dog,” Tejcek told Shimer. “You really help us out.”

“From that point forward, we’ve been like, yep, he’s Shime Dog,” says Love, and the nickname stuck. “He really does anything he can to try to help and support us.”

Since women’s bobsled debuted at the Olympic Winter Games in 2002, the U.S. women has won medals in every Games: seven in two-man bobsled and two in monobob, which debuted at the 2022 Games. It’s a legacy that Love hopes to carry on — at the Olympic Winter Games Milano-Cortina 2026 and hopefully through 2034 when the Winter Games come to Love’s hometown.

One of the strongest push athletes in the world, Love is particularly a force in women’s monobob. She holds start records at the Lake Placid, La Plagne, and Lillehammer tracks, as well as track records at La Plagne and Lillehammer, and will be on the list of favorites to win an Olympic medal at Milan Cortina 2026.

“I certainly have belief that she’s got everything it takes to be an Olympic champion,” Shimer says. “Time will tell.”