Elana Meyers Taylor
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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 ties speedskater 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.

The Softball Player Who Became a Bobsled Legend

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.

Meyers Taylor's Husband, Children, and Life Off the Ice

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.

The couple has two sons. Nico, born in February 2020, was diagnosed with Down syndrome and bilateral hearing loss. Noah arrived in 2022 and was also born deaf. The family learned American Sign Language together, and both boys received cochlear implants. They travel with their mother during competition season.

'I want my children to know that people told their mum that it can't happen and then she went for it anyway,' she told NBC Sports.

Five Games, Six Medals and a Long Wait for Gold

Her Olympic timeline tells the story of someone who kept getting painfully close. Bronze at Vancouver 2010 with Erin Pac. Silver at Sochi 2014, where a mistake on the final run cost her the gold by a tenth of a second. Another silver at PyeongChang 2018 alongside Lauren Gibbs. Then, Beijing 2022 brought a monobob silver and a two-woman bronze with Sylvia Hoffman.

At Milan Cortina, she entered the fourth and final monobob run sitting in silver position. She drove clean. Nolte, who had led after three runs, slipped just enough on her final trip down the track. The margin was 0.4 seconds.

'My nickname for people who know me most is E-Money,' Meyers Taylor told NBC News before the competition. 'I'm money under pressure.'

Sixteen years after she first pushed a bobsled for Team USA, with two young sons watching from the finish area and a career's worth of near-misses behind her, Meyers Taylor proved that much was true.

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