Elana Meyers Taylor

Elana Meyers Taylor was born on October 24, 1984, in Douglasville, Georgia — a suburb west of Atlanta — and grew up as a multi-sport athlete with an exceptional natural gift for power and explosiveness. She was not a winter sports kid. She was a softball player, and a very good one.

At George Washington University in Washington, D.C., Meyers Taylor was a standout pitcher and outfielder for the Colonials, earning All-Atlantic 10 honors and building the combination of fast-twitch muscle fiber, coordination, and competitive mentality that would later define a completely different career. She graduated in 2006 with a degree in exercise science.

"Softball gave me everything — the explosiveness, the mental toughness, the ability to perform under pressure. I just ended up using it on a very different kind of field."

Her transition from softball diamond to sliding track is one of the more unlikely origin stories in American Olympic history — a chain of events set in motion by a USA Bobsled & Skeleton recruitment program specifically designed to identify explosive college athletes from non-traditional winter sports backgrounds.

In 2007, Meyers Taylor attended a USA Bobsled talent identification camp and immediately stood out. Her push times — the critical sprint at the start of a bobsled run that largely determines a team's competitive fate — were elite from day one. Coaches described her as "a once-in-a-decade physical specimen for the push track."

She began her bobsled career as a brakeman — the rear-seat athlete responsible for the push start and the brake at the finish — before transitioning to pilot, the driver who steers the sled through the track's curves. The move to pilot is the harder, more demanding role: it requires years of technical refinement, an intuitive feel for ice conditions, and the nerve to make micro-adjustments at speeds exceeding 130 km/h.

Meyers Taylor mastered it. Within two years of picking up the sport, she was competing at World Cup level. Within three, she was bound for her first Olympics.

Vancouver 2010 — The Debut

Meyers Taylor made her Olympic debut at the 2010 Vancouver Games, competing as a brakeman in the two-woman bobsled alongside pilot Erin Pac. The pair finished fourth — agonizingly outside the medals — but the experience cemented Meyers Taylor's commitment to the sport and, specifically, to becoming a pilot herself.

She spent the next four years overhauling her technical game, working with coaches who had developed some of the fastest European pilots in the sport. The results at Sochi would justify every hour of that work.

Sochi 2014 — First Medal, New Identity

As the pilot of the USA-1 sled at Sochi 2014, Meyers Taylor won the silver medal in two-woman bobsled — her first Olympic medal and the first of what would become an unprecedented collection. She finished behind Canada's Kaillie Humphries, who took gold, but the silver announced Meyers Taylor as a legitimate world-class pilot.

Between Sochi and PyeongChang, she won multiple World Championship medals and established herself as the most consistent American bobsled pilot of her generation — male or female.

PyeongChang 2018 — The Bronze

At the 2018 PyeongChang Games, competing in a uniquely challenging two-woman bobsled field that included Germany's Mariama Jamanka (gold) and Canada's Phylicia George (silver), Meyers Taylor won the bronze medal. Three Olympics, three medals — a feat no American female bobsledder had ever achieved.

She was 33 years old. Most observers assumed her legacy was essentially complete. She had other ideas.

Beijing 2022 — Silver While Pregnant

The Beijing Games produced what many consider the defining moment of Meyers Taylor's career — not because of what she won, but because of the circumstances under which she competed. She arrived at Beijing 2022 pregnant, competing in the inaugural women's monobob event with the knowledge that her son would be born just months after the Games concluded.

She won silver. Kaillie Humphries — now competing for the United States after switching national federations — took gold. The result was bittersweet for Meyers Taylor, but the sheer act of competing at an Olympic Games while pregnant and finishing on the podium is without modern precedent in bobsled history.

"I competed for two now. This one is for him."

Her son, Nico, was born in the spring of 2022. He traveled to Italy for her fifth and most triumphant Games.

Coming into Milano Cortina, the questions about Meyers Taylor centered not on her ability but on her age. At 41, she was the oldest competitor in the women's monobob field by a significant margin. Some analysts picked her for a podium — perhaps silver behind the rising German Laura Nolte — but almost no one predicted she would dominate the event from first run to last.

She dominated the event from first run to last.

On the demanding Cortina sliding track — 16 curves, 1,408 meters of ice carved into the Dolomites — Meyers Taylor posted the fastest time in three of the four competitive heats. Her third-run clocking shattered the existing track record. Germany's Laura Nolte (silver) and Canada's Christine de Bruin (bronze) never found an answer.

When her final run confirmed the gold, she collapsed on the finish ice and wept. Her son Nico, watching from the stands with family, was photographed in a moment that went viral worldwide: a three-year-old holding a tiny American flag, watching his mother become an Olympic champion.

"I've been studying this track for two years. Every curve. Every push start variation. I came here knowing every inch of it, and today it all came together. I did this for Nico. I did this for every kid who thinks their window has closed. It hasn't."

For the full match report and run-by-run breakdown, see: Elana Meyers Taylor Wins Monobob Gold at 41: Oldest Olympic Bobsled Champion in History.

Meyers Taylor's career has rewritten the record books at virtually every stage. The Milano Cortina gold capped a collection of firsts that no other female bobsled athlete has come close to matching:

• Most Olympic medals by a female bobsledder — ever: Four medals across four consecutive Games (2014, 2018, 2022, 2026)
• Oldest Olympic bobsled champion in history: At 41 years and 3 months, she surpasses Swiss pilot Beat Hefti (gold, Sochi 2014, age 38)
• Oldest American woman to win Winter Olympic gold in any discipline since 1952
• First woman to medal at five consecutive Olympics in sliding sports
• First athlete in any sport to compete at an Olympics while pregnant and finish on the podium (Beijing 2022 silver)

Meyers Taylor married former NFL player and bobsled brakeman Nic Taylor in 2014 — a dual-athlete household that has navigated the demands of elite sport together across multiple Olympic cycles. Their son Nico was born in spring 2022, months after the Beijing Games.

Beyond competition, Meyers Taylor has been one of the most visible advocates for diversity in winter sports. As one of the most prominent Black athletes in the history of the Winter Olympics — a Games that has historically struggled with racial representation — she has used every platform available to her to make the sport more welcoming and visible to communities that rarely see themselves on the sliding track.

"I want kids who look like me to see this and know the door is open. This sport is for everyone. These Games are for everyone."

She has partnered with youth sports organizations, spoken at schools across the country, and maintained an active public presence specifically aimed at drawing underrepresented communities into winter sports pipelines. USA Bobsled credits her visibility as a direct factor in increased diversity across its development programs throughout the 2020s.

She has also been open about the physical and emotional cost of competing across five Olympic cycles — the injuries, the recovery protocols, the mental load of balancing elite training with pregnancy and motherhood, and the quiet resilience required to keep pushing when retirement would have been the easier choice.