Elana Meyers Taylor has finally become an Olympic gold medalist – and made history in the process.
The Team USA Olympic bobsledder, 41, already had two bronze medals and three silvers under belt, but as most sportspeople do, had big dreams of bagging a gold.
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And she did just that on Monday (16 February) in the women’s monobob competition at the 2026 Milan Cortina Games.
As reported by NBC News, Meyers Taylor was 0.15 seconds away from first place after finishing the third heat right behind German athlete Laura Nolte. However, she managed to slide into first place by just .04 seconds.
Her fourth run of 59.51 seconds saw her edge the standings with an impressive combined time of 3:57.93.
The American athlete not only added the coveted medal to her collection but also made history as the oldest woman to win gold in the sport in Olympic history.
It comes after she became the most decorated Black Winter Olympian in Team USA history back in 2022.
She was cheered on by her husband and two children in the crowd, Nico, five, and Noah, three, which made the career-defining moment even more special.
According to the publication, Meyers Taylor said to reporters after her win: “This is definitely the top, not only the Olympic champion, but to be able to do this with my kids, both my kids like it’s just incredible.”
She added that no matter what medal she won, she’s ‘mom’ before she’s a gold medalist.
Meyers Taylor gushed: “It means everything, and it means nothing at all at the same time, because in six days, I’ll be at school drop-offs at the end of the day, and I’ll be in the drop-off line, and I don’t even know that anybody will know what happened here today.”
Ahead of the competition, she made it clear exactly who she was doing it for.
Meyers Taylor said: “Nobody in their right mind would say, ‘Hey, a 41-year-old woman is going to have a shot at another Olympic medal in a speed and power sport’. I want my children to know that people told their mom that it can’t happen and then she went for it anyways.”
As we say, Meyers Taylor was already a decorated medalist before this, and the gold medal in Italy marked her sixth piece of Olympic hardware.
She won bronze in the 2010 Vancouver Games’ two-woman bobsled event, before scoring a silver medal in the Winter Olympics in Sochi in 2014, and again in PyeongChang in 2018, before winning another bronze medal in 2022 at the women’s bobsled and silver in the monobob event.
The Olympic champion said: “It means so much to the support staff around me, to my friends, my family, everyone behind me who has worked so hard to even get me to the starting line, let alone to win a gold medal. It has been incredible/
“I just focused on what I needed to do, the points I needed to hit. I had gone over the track again with my coach this morning, and he told me what I needed to do.
“I was super grateful to be able to put these pieces together and finally have a run that I could walk away very proud of.”
