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At 41 years old, Elana Meyers Taylor races down the track in a 350-pound bobsled as the most decorated female Olympic bobsledder of all time. She is also the most decorated Black athlete in Winter Games history with three silver and two bronze medals.
“Most people think of bobsleds like a roller coaster, but it’s not at all. Like you have the vibration of the sled. You have going up and down banked curves,” she explained. “Like it is insane. But when you hit it right, when you’re really nailing it, it’s the closest thing to flying I could think of.”
The 2026 Milan Cortina Games is her fifth consecutive Winter Olympics.
“I love going fast and I love being able to control this thing that should be out of control, that should be uncontrollable,” she said. “It’s just so much fun to me and when you hit the curves right and when you’re gliding, it feels like being a superhero.”
Her path to bobsledding
Bobsledding wasn’t originally Meyers Taylor’s intended path. She initially wanted to make it to the Summer Olympics as a softball player.
“I tried out for the summer team and had a disaster of a tryout,” Meyers Taylor recalled.
She credits her parents for helping her to find another avenue to accomplish her Olympic dream.
“My parents had actually seen bobsled on TV, and they’re like, ‘Hey, why don’t you try this?’ I was like, ‘Sure, why not?’ Googled it, emailed the coach and got invited to a try-out.”
She said switching from softball to bobsledding isn’t as extreme as one would think.
“Bobsled is one of those sports you get in later in life, anyway. Our strength and speed that you need in softball converts really well to bobsled,” Meyers Taylor explained. “Like if you have that athleticism, we can teach you everything you need to know to become an elite bobsledder.”
It is an expensive sport, though. Sleds can cost $60,000 and there’s also a need for ice – so Meyers Taylor, who now lives in Texas, gets creative in the summer.
“What better way when you don’t have a push track, and we don’t have access to a sled, than push a car,” she said.
Family support
Meyers Taylor said she’s experienced racism and bouts of depression over the years, but credits the support from her family for helping her to push through.
Her husband, Nic Taylor, is a former Olympic bobsledder and her dad often helps with their two boys.
“They both have different needs. They’re both deaf and my oldest has Down syndrome as well,” she said. “So not only are we juggling normal parenting stuff, we’re juggling therapies. We’re juggling learning sign language and the biggest thing for me is it is a family effort and we have a lot of fun doing it.”
