Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy
Across four Olympics, Elana Meyers Taylor had come as close as humanly possible to Olympic gold without winning it.
She’d competed in both two-woman bobsled and monobob. She’d racked up three silvers and two bronzes. More than once, she missed the top of the podium by fractions of a second. Each time she went home to Texas agonizingly short of her ultimate goal, four years away from her next chance.
Then, in one thrilling minute on Monday night, her lifetime wait was suddenly over—and she had more than monobob gold to show for it. Meyers Taylor, a 41-year-old mother of two young children, set a record as the oldest Winter Olympic champion in an individual event.
“I thought it was impossible,” she said.
To make it possible, Meyers Taylor trekked to Vancouver, Sochi, Pyeongchang, and Beijing in her 16-year search for Olympic glory. But that only begins to describe her struggle before Milan Cortina.
Meyers Taylor’s earliest Olympic ambitions didn’t involve bobsled, ice, or even the winter Games. She had dreamed of representing the U.S. in softball, which she played on a scholarship at George Washington. But on the day it mattered most, she flubbed her tryout and failed to make the team.
“My parents saw bobsled on TV, said, ‘Hey, want to try this sport?’” Meyers Taylor said. “I said, ‘Sure, why not?’”
Milano Cortina 2026 Olympics – Bobsleigh – Women’s Monobob Heat 3 – Cortina Sliding Centre, Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy – February 16, 2026. Elana Meyers Taylor of United States in action during Women’s Monobob Heat 3 REUTERS/Athit Perawongmetha
But for a long while, bobsled seemed to be a different vehicle for Olympic disappointment. Gold eluded her at every turn, by excruciatingly small margins. At the 2018 Games in Pyeongchang, her two-woman team finished 0.07 seconds behind the winning tandem.
Meyers Taylor fought concussions and even a bout of Covid at Beijing 2022 that spoiled another dream: acting as Team USA’s flag-bearer.
“You get a lot of people that like to write you off as soon as you reach 40, it’s all downhill from there,” said her 40-year-old U.S. teammate, Kaillie Humphries Armbruster, who took bronze. “I think Elana and I are both proof that that’s not true.”
So Meyers Taylor came to Italy figuring it was her final shot.
“You have to be able to ride the storm,” she said.
Entering the fourth and final heat of the monobob, in which the winner is determined by the cumulative total of all four times, Meyers Taylor trailed the leader by 0.15 seconds. Then she went hurtling down the track for the run that would change everything.
When it was all over, 16 years of work had paid off: Meyers Taylor won gold by .04 seconds.
Milano Cortina 2026 Olympics – Bobsleigh – Women’s Monobob Victory Ceremony -Gold medallist Elana Meyers Taylor of United States celebrates on the podium during the Women’s Monobob Victory Ceremony with silver medalist Laura Nolte of Germany and bronze medallist Kaillie Armbruster Humphries of United States. REUTERS/Annegret Hilse
