When Elana Meyers Taylor crossed the finish line in the women's monobob final at Milan Cortina on 16 February, she clutched a US flag and burst into tears. After five Olympic Games and five podium finishes without gold, the 41-year-old American had finally done it.
Her combined time of 3:57.93 across four runs was enough to edge Germany's Laura Nolte by a razor-thin 0.04 seconds. US teammate Kaillie Humphries took the bronze.
That sixth career Olympic medal tiesspeedskater Bonnie Blair's record for the most Winter Olympic medals by an American woman. It also makes Meyers Taylor the oldest Winter Olympian to win gold in an individual event. Not bad for someone who never set out to be a bobsledder in the first place.
Elana Alessandra Meyers was born on 10 October 1984 in Oceanside, California, and raised in Douglasville, Georgia. Athletics ran in the family. Her father, Eddie Meyers, was a standout running back at the US Naval Academy who signed with the Atlanta Falcons after graduating. He never played a regular-season NFL game. A mandatory six-year military commitment kept him in the Marines,according to NBC Sports. He later became a regional president at PNC Bank in Georgia.
Meyers Taylor is African American and is now the most decorated Black athlete in Winter Olympic history. She has spoken candidly about facing racism during her career.
As a teenager, she played softball on a full scholarship at George Washington University, breaking programme records across four seasons. When she failed to make the US Olympic softball team, her parents floated an alternative. Her mother, Janet, suggested bobsled. Eddie recruited former Falcons teammate Billy 'White Shoes' Johnson to coach her fitness.
She made the US national bobsled team in her rookie season in 2007. Three years on, she was an Olympian.
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Meyers Taylor married fellow bobsledder Nic Taylor in April 2014. She was interning for the US Bobsled and Skeleton Federation in 2011 when Nic rang the office about paperwork. She answered. The call ran far longer than either expected, and Nic later admitted he knew he wanted to marry her 'the first time I talked to her,'according to The Sporting News. He proposed at the 2013 World Championships podium.
Nic served as a Team USA alternate at the 2018 and 2022 Winter Olympics. He now works as a conditioning coach and chiropractor for NBA players, and doubles as Elana's strength coach on the road.
Source: International Business Times UK
