REGION — Elana Meyers Taylor, the Oceanside-born bobsledder who has become one of the most decorated athletes in Winter Games history, added a long-sought gold medal to her résumé Monday night, winning the women’s monobob at the Milan Cortina 2026 Winter Olympics in Italy.
At 41, Meyers Taylor became the oldest woman to win an individual gold medal in Winter Games history. The victory marked her sixth career Olympic medal across five Games and capped a journey that began more than a decade ago.
Her winning time of 3 minutes, 57.93 seconds was just 0.04 seconds faster than Germany’s Laura Nolte, underscoring the razor-thin margins that define sliding sports. Canada’s Kaillie Humphries took bronze.
With the gold, Meyers Taylor tied speedskater Bonnie Blair for the most Winter Olympic medals by a U.S. woman. She also extended her own record for the most medals won by a Black athlete in Winter Olympic history.
A five-time Olympian, Meyers Taylor previously earned bronze as a push athlete at the 2010 Vancouver Games, then transitioned to pilot and won silver in the two-woman event at Sochi in 2014 and Pyeongchang in 2018. At the Beijing Games in 2022, she captured silver in the inaugural women’s monobob and bronze in the two-woman competition.
Her latest triumph came after a frightening crash during training in January, just weeks before the Games, raising questions about whether she would be at full strength in Italy. Instead, she delivered one of the fastest runs of the competition in the final heat to secure the gold.
Meyers Taylor will now turn her focus to the two-woman competition, where she is partnering with 23-year-old Jadin O’Brien.
Born while her father, Eddie Meyers — a standout running back at the United States Naval Academy in the early 1980s — was stationed at Camp Pendleton, Meyers Taylor grew up in Douglasville, Georgia. Her earliest Olympic memory came at age 11 during the 1996 Atlanta Summer Games, when she briefly held the Olympic torch.
A multi-sport standout in high school, she attended George Washington University on a softball scholarship, where she played shortstop and pitched. After graduation, she was introduced to bobsled in 2007 and made the national team in her rookie season.
Since then, she has compiled 10 World Championship medals, including four golds, and more Olympic medals than any other woman in bobsled history.
Off the track, Meyers Taylor balances elite sport with motherhood. She and her husband, Nic Taylor — a two-time Olympic alternate for the U.S. bobsled team — have two sons, Nico and Noah. Both boys are deaf, and Noah also has Down syndrome. Meyers Taylor has spoken openly about learning American Sign Language to communicate with her sons and advocating for children with disabilities.
In Italy, moments after securing gold, she was quickly reunited with her children at the finish area — a reminder, she has said, that while Olympic glory is meaningful, it does not define her.
Her gold in Milan adds to a career that spans nearly two decades — and affirms her place among the greatest winter athletes in U.S. history.
