A Mystery Illness Terrorized Her Youth. Now, Olympic Bobsledder Jadin O’Brien Is Shining a Light

Recruited on Instagram by Elana Meyers Taylor, the Notre Dame track champion only took up bobsled last year. But it’s far from the biggest challenge she’s had to overcome.

Jadin O’Brien (right) has teamed up with all-time U.S. bobsled great Elana Meyers Taylor. | Courtesy of IBSF

Editor’s note: If you or someone you know is having thoughts of suicide or is in emotional distress, contact the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK(8255) or at suicidepreventionlifeline.org

Action was a constant in the O’Brien household in Pewaukee, Wis. Seven kids, all athletic, always in motion, rarely a quiet moment. Amid the whirl and the racket, it was notable when Jadin, second-oldest of the brood, was standing stock-still one day in the backyard.

Her siblings referred to the little blonde grade-schooler’s odd moments as Jadin doing her weird stuff again. Her parents were more concerned. Something was deeply wrong.

“She was afraid that if she moved,” says Jadin’s mom, Leslie, “the house would blow up.”

This was just one of the debilitating fears and behaviors that gripped Jadin from roughly the ages of 5 through 11. At times she struggled to brush her hair, dress herself or interact at school. At other times she was beset with catastrophic feelings—believing she was doomed to hell, she once tried to carve a cross on her forehead with a spike of a lawn sprinkler. Even at a tender age, she thought God wanted her to take her own life. Life was a daily exercise in terror.

“It wasn’t Jadin anymore,” Leslie says, holding back tears. “We didn’t know if she’d be able to function in society. Literally just talking about it, I have a pit in my stomach. It was so awful. We checked off everything we thought could help her—medical, psychological, homeopathic, spiritual.”

What would you do if you had no answers to a heartbreaking crisis with one of your children? You’d keep looking, no matter what. 

A devoutly Catholic family, the O’Briens prayed for intercession from Saint Thérèse de Lisieux, who is often invoked on behalf of the sick. Eventually they sought the guidance of an exorcist, Father Cliff Ermatinger, of the Archdiocese of Milwaukee. He prayed over Jadin and told the family, “There is nothing spiritual here. You need to address this medically.”

Finally, a teacher at her school suggested to Leslie and her husband, Kevin, that Jadin be tested for strep. The test came back positive, with infection suspected not just in her throat but throughout her body. The family finally had something it could address: Pediatric Acute-onset Neuropsychiatric Syndrome, or PANDAS. 

According to the National Institute of Mental Health, PANDAS is “characterized by a sudden and severe onset of obsessive-compulsive disorder or restrictive eating disorder in children before puberty,” and is “often associated with noticeable changes in mood, behavior and sensory and motor function in children.”

PANDAS remains a subject of ongoing debate in the medical community. But after treatment with antibiotics and an eight-week session of homeopathic remedies administered three times a week, the O’Briens saw the old Jadin return.

“It was like losing a child,” Leslie says, “and then getting her back.”

Today, at age 23, she’s a U.S. Olympian. An improbable one, transitioning from a three-time NCAA pentathlon national champion at Notre Dame to a bobsled pusher in a breathtakingly short period of time. She is in Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy, to apply the start-line muscle and speed to push Elana Meyers Taylor’s two-woman sled, shooting for a medal this week.

O’Brien only started bobsled training last summer. Now, she’s on the U.S. Olympic team. | IOC/Getty Images

Ask Jadin about the girl she was, the one who endured so much fear at what is supposed to be a carefree age, and her voice catches.

“I would tell my [younger] self how proud I am of her,” she says. “What I went through as a kid was very scarring. And despite the scars, you were still able to accomplish your lifelong dream. Because my dream of being an Olympian started when I had PANDAS, and luckily the disease did not take that drive or that dream away. 

“I am just proud of myself for being able to get through something like that, and for defying the odds, putting myself out there, trying something completely new to accomplish that dream. So I would, if I could meet that little girl again, tell her how proud I am of her.”

From NCAA Track Champion to Olympic Bobsled

On Sept. 12, 2024, Jadin O’Brien posted a video on Instagram of her performing max-out lifts in the weight room at Notre Dame: deadlifting 335 pounds three times; power-cleaning 201; bench-pressing 170.

Among the replies: “That’s bobsled strength right there!!!”

The author: Elana Meyers Taylor, at that point a five-time Olympic medalist and the most decorated bobsledder in U.S. history. In recent years Meyers Taylor has taken on a recruiter role for USA Bobsled, scouring the landscape for athletes whose abilities might transfer to that sport. 

Few Americans grow up being bobsledders; it’s more of an accidental sport. That includes Meyers Taylor, who was a softball player at George Washington University and found her way onto the sliding track. After so many years in the sport, she knew a bobsled pusher when she saw one, with track and field a prime place to scout for talent.

O’Brien had the prized combination of explosive speed and power. As a pentathlete/heptathlete, she had to be fast enough to run the 200-meter dash and 100-meter hurdles and strong enough to throw the shot put and javelin. 

Meyers Taylor dropped her comment in O’Brien’s post. She followed up with a direct message. O’Brien didn’t respond.

“I ignored it because I didn’t realize who she was and I thought it was a scam,” O’Brien says.

Meyers Taylor was undeterred. She reached out again, and O’Brien realized it was a legitimate inquiry. She asked for more information as a courtesy—but courtesy became curiosity. After an outstanding senior season at Notre Dame—winning a third straight NCAA indoor pentathlon championship and finishing second in the outdoor pentathlon—the idea took root.

At Notre Dame, O’Brien was a three-time NCAA pentathlon national champion. | Jamie Schwaberow/NCAA Photos/Getty Images

The premise of an entirely new athletic challenge wasn’t overly daunting—versatility is a hallmark of multi-event athletes, and O’Brien played a variety of other sports growing up. The whole family did—Kevin was an all-Mid American Conference linebacker at Bowling Green who had training camp stints with the Buffalo Bills and New England Patriots, and played in Europe; Leslie was a track athlete at Bowling Green and became a coach. Most of their five boys have played football, while both girls became college track athletes.

Kevin poured words of competitive wisdom into the kids. The family slogan: “full-go.”

“I was so overwhelmed with making mistakes as a football player,” he says. “It was an anchor. I had to learn how to handle pressure. Gratitude and anxiety can’t live in the mind at the same time. I had to let go of anxiety. 

“If you go full-go and do it for a greater good, everything will work out, win or lose.”

Everything kept working out for Jadin, the most gifted athlete in the family. Once her illness was treated, she flourished. Even repeated injuries never derailed her. 

“She was always determined to do everything,” Leslie says. “Her grit has been incomparable. She has a very, very special mentality, strength and faith.”

The Olympic dream had always centered on track and field—she finished seventh in the heptathlon at the 2024 U.S. Olympic Trials and was fifth at U.S. outdoor championships last year. But she was ready to give this arcane winter sport a try. Her family and her boyfriend, former Notre Dame tight end Kevin Bauman, encouraged her to go for it.

O’Brien walked with her bobsled teammates in the opening ceremony in Cortina. | Franck Fife/AFP/Getty Images

Pushing a bobsled isn’t as easy as simply running fast. Let Canadian Olympic bobsledder Mike Evelyn explain: “You have to get to this mental state where you’re basically a racehorse. You need to have horse blinders on and be calm because you’re trying to do the most ballistic, violent running anyone’s ever done, and yet, it’s very technical.”

Says O’Brien: “What you’re doing when you push a sled, that’s not a natural movement. And then velocity is a big thing in bobsled, so you want the least amount of resistance, or at least amount of pullback, when you jump into a sled. And to do that, you have to long jump in. So you sprint on ice, you’re running down a hill with a sled that’s trying to leave you. It’s trying to go, you’re holding on. You’re trying not to pull back, but you also have to propel yourself into the sled while it’s trying to leave you.

“It depends on the year how fast you need to learn—in my case of being an Olympic year, I need to learn instantly. So being a sponge was very important.”

O’Brien soaked up the technique. Two days after outdoor championships last summer, she started training bobsled for the first time. Two weeks after that, she attended rookie camp at Lake Placid. Shortly thereafter she tried out for and made the World Cup team. Before she knew it, O’Brien was traveling Europe on the World Cup circuit, working with a variety of U.S. bobsled pilots.

But that didn’t guarantee an Olympic spot. It wasn’t until January that O’Brien knew she’d made the team—and would be pushing for Meyers Taylor, the bobsled icon who recruited her (and won her first Olympic gold Monday night in the monobob).

Jadin slyly relayed the news by phone to her parents, who were waiting breathlessly. In a somber tone of voice, she started naming off each pilot and their pusher, ending with, “And Elana is paired with Jadin O’Brien.”

The screaming might have been heard all over Pewaukee.

“They freaked out,” Jadin says. “My mom peed her pants. She wouldn’t stop screaming. I was like, ‘O.K., O.K., settle down. You’re going to hurt something.’ ” 

The O’Briens went into hurry-up planning mode. Mom, dad and all six siblings are in Italy to see Jadin compete—no small feat of organization, and no small expense.

“We told them this trip is their Christmas and birthday presents for a long time,” Kevin says.

Becoming a PANDAS Advocate

One of the best things Jadin O’Brien did for herself at Notre Dame was enlisting the help of a sports psychologist. That helped her understand the nature of her childhood trauma, and the aftereffects upon her adult life.

“Honestly, I chose not to think about it once I was better,” she says. “It was such a bad time in my life, I chose to forget about it. And as you mature and you realize what bearing trauma can do to you later on, that’s when I started realizing I kind of have to talk about this. I started to realize, Holy cow, that was really bad.”

Buried worries about feeling abnormal were addressed. So was negative internal dialog and a fear of letting down coaches, teammates and others.

“It helped me understand myself better instead of saying to myself, ‘Wow, you have some problems,’ or, ‘Why are you so weird?’ ” Jadin says. “I was degrading myself. … I don’t know if empowering is the right word, but being able to understand myself allowed me to stop beating myself up about things that came from the past.”

Speaking about her childhood affliction is still dicey for O’Brien. But as her level of understanding what happened has increased, so has her ability to become a spokesperson for PANDAS awareness. She recently joined the board of the Alex Manfull Fund, which supports awareness, education and research to further understand PANDAS.

“Sports has given me a really great platform to speak about this,” she says. “It’s pretty hard to talk about because there’s stigmas out there, and when you open up about something like that, people don’t always take it well. But I’ve been able to use my platform—first as a Notre Dame athlete, then as a national champion and now as an Olympian—to change that because there have been a lot of families reaching out. It’s definitely not easy, but the reward is worth it.”

Americans will watch O’Brien push a bobsled this weekend in the Winter Olympics and cheer. It’s been a remarkable journey for someone who had never done such a thing until a few months ago. But the deeper story is the growth of a girl who wasn’t sure what adulthood would look like. 

Jadin O’Brien made it out of her personal hell. She kept pushing.

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