Their arms raised and an American flag draped across their backs, Jasmine Jones and Kaillie Armbruster Humphries flashed smiles, held hands and leaned against one another on a cold night on an Italian mountain range.
The bobsled duo knew they had earned a spot on the Olympic podium.
“When we got to the finish, we looked up at the clock and we could hear the crowd going crazy,” Jones said by phone. “We could tell by our coach’s reaction we were in good shape.”
Jones, the Hempfield graduate and Jeannette native who made a name for herself sprinting around Westmoreland County tracks as a high school star, earned a bronze medal Saturday at the Winter Games in Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy.
The former Eastern Michigan sprinter was the brakeman for the team’s two-day medal run.
“I’m just so grateful to be in that position and to have the trust and cohesion,” said Jones, 29. “We’re a powerhouse team.”
Jones and her pilot, Armbruster Humphries, finished third behind two German teams piloted by Laura Nolte and Lisa Buckwitz in the two-woman bobsled event.
“Just knowing Jasmine was behind me, knowing what this meant for us as a team, I really wanted it for her more than for myself,” Armbruster Humphries said. “She gave everything she did and entrusted me to do the same. That’s what teamwork’s really about. I couldn’t have done this with anybody else, and I didn’t want to do it with anybody else.”
Kaillie Humphries and Jasmine Jones get their medal moment. ???? #WinterOlympics pic.twitter.com/yyubEViUEz
— NBC Olympics & Paralympics (@NBCOlympics) February 21, 2026
Nolte, who teamed with Deborah Levi and won gold for the second straight Games, finished with a four-run total of 3 minutes, 48.46 seconds. Buckwitz, with Neele Schuten, earned silver, just 0.53 seconds behind (3:48.99).
Jones and Armbruster Humphries trailed by 0.75 seconds and finished in 3:49.21.
They set a track record in Friday’s opening heat, then dropped to third going into Day 2.
“We had a couple hiccups in the second heat but we bounced back,” Jones said. “You try to control what you can control.”
In Saturday’s final heat, Jones said her hand slipped when she was getting into the sled, and Armbruster Humphries did not have the smoothest load.
“At the Olympics, it’s all about consistency,” Jones said. “You have to trust the process.”
Kaillie Humphries and Jasmine Jones' bronze medal winning run! pic.twitter.com/SrzZGP3wLX
— NBC Olympics & Paralympics (@NBCOlympics) February 21, 2026
The U.S. tandem was greeted by cheering family members at the finish line, a medal all but secured.
Jones’s mother, Christine Graves Vincent, whose trip to Italy was paid for by a GoFundMe collection, hugged her daughter shortly after the final run down the slope. The “Jasmine Jones’s Mom” on the back of her USA jacket gave her away.
They shared a tearful embrace as years of hard work and sacrifice reached a crescendo.
“She has supported me in everything I have done,” Jones said. “It truly means the world to me.”
Amazing moment for the now Bronze medalist Jasmine Jones and her mother who Jones had to start a fundraiser to get in attendance. pic.twitter.com/H3yLezdEyE
— Justin Surrency (@JustinSurrency) February 21, 2026
Jones and Armbruster Humphries will be remembered as the all-mom team. Both made their children proud. Jones talked to her 4-year-old daughter, Jade, via FaceTime.
“She wanted to see the medal,” Jones said. “I showed her, and she smiled.”
It was the sixth medal for Armbruster Humphries, tying monobob gold medalist Elana Meyers Taylor for the most by any woman in the sport’s history.
Jones and Armbruster Humphries were in third place after two heats, following runs of 56.92 and 57.24 on Friday.
On their third run earlier Saturday, Jones and Armbruster Humphries had a fast start, trailing the leaders by just 0.3 seconds heading into the first turn. They reached nearly 80 mph on their run and finished 0.54 seconds behind the German leaders.
Also for the U.S., Kaysha Love — who has been dealing with a hamstring issue for much of the season and had it flare up again in Italy — and Azaria Hill finished fifth in 3:49.71. Meyers Taylor and Jadin O’Brien, who were doomed by a second-heat skid at the top of the track Friday night, got a few spots back in the standings Saturday and finished tied for seventh in 3:50.49.
Germany now has six bobsled medals in these Olympics, the U.S. has three and the rest of the world has zero.
The divide might get bigger Sunday in the final sliding event of the Milan Cortina Games; Germany, which already swept the two-man race, is in position to do the same thing in four-man after Saturday’s opening two heats of that competition.
And Germany is now up to 17 sliding medals, counting bobsled, skeleton and luge, at Milan Cortina — one more than the rest of the world. Austria has five, the U.S. now has four along with Italy, Britain has two and Latvia has one.
The two-woman race was basically for the bronze going into the final run.
Nolte — who had the lead, albeit a much smaller one, going into the final heat of the monobob competition that Meyers Taylor ended up winning — led Buckwitz by 0.35 seconds going into the last heat. Buckwitz’s lead over Armbruster Humphries was 0.19 seconds, and Armbruster Humphries was only 0.09 seconds up on Germany’s Kim Kalicki in the race for the bronze.
Kalicki’s final time: 3:49.36.
Armbruster Humphries’s updated Olympic medal count: three golds, three bronzes.
“It’s been a dream come true, a blessing,” Jones said. “I have tried to take it one day at a time. Right now, I am exhausted.”
They will attend Sunday’s closing ceremony, and Jones said she will come home Tuesday. She lives in Lake Placid, N.Y., where she trains with the Air Force World Class Athlete Program but will likely make her rounds in the Greensburg area.
Jones is the second athlete from Westmoreland County to earn an Olympic medal, joining wrestler Spencer Lee (Franklin Regional), who won silver in Paris in 2024.
Jones also has won one gold medal, one silver and three bronze in the World Cup.
The U.S. has now medaled in all seven Olympic competitions in the event.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
