First Gold at 41, Elana Meyers Taylor Is Team USA’s Most Heartfelt Olympic Story

The bobsledder was already the most decorated Black Winter Olympian of all time with medals at four straight Olympics. Now a mother of two, her first gold medal feels even more special.

Elana Meyers Taylor’s sixth Olympic medal was her first gold, leading to an emotional celebration in Cortina. | Marco Bertorello/AFP/Getty Images

CORTINA d’AMPEZZO, Italy — It was past the kids’ bedtime—“way past bedtime,” said Elana Meyers Taylor with a laugh—but so what? How often do three little boys get to hang out around the medal podium after their moms win Olympic medals?

There was a time, not that long ago, when the answer to that question was never. It’s still very rare. Women athletes were supposed to choose motherhood over sports when they had kids. Freshly minted gold medalist monobob slider Meyers Taylor and bronze medalist Kaillie Humphries chose both—plus all the chaos that comes with those life decisions—and thrived.

They’re old for elite athletes. They’re not young for mothers of small children. Didn’t matter. They could not be deterred from writing a story for the ages, and for the aged.

Here they were on a chilly Italian night, Meyers Taylor at 41 and Humphries at 40, with medals and their boys’ arms around their necks. Five-year-old Nico and 3-year-old Noah Taylor were with Elana, their father, Nic, and grandparents. Aulden Armbruster, 20 months old, was there with Kaillie and his father, Travis, and grandparents. It was a veritable day care center at the Cortina Sliding Center.

Mother’s Day has never fallen in the Olympic calendar until now.

This was a historic night of bobsled on several fronts. Among the milestones:  For the first time in Olympic annals, two non-teammates appeared on the same podium in five straight Olympic Games. Meyers Taylor now stands next to speedskating legend Bonnie Blair as the only six-time American female medalists in Winter Games history. She also became the oldest individual gold medalist in Winter Games history, surpassing the accomplishment of 40-year-old Norwegian biathlete Benjamin Karl way back last week. 

Last but not least, both bobsledders further cemented themselves as inspirations for multitasking mothers everywhere. With enough dedication, enthusiasm and support, they can have the best of both their work and parenting worlds.

Team USA earned two medals in the monobob with Meyers Taylor (left) and Kaillie Humphries. | Marco Bertorello/AFP/Getty Images

“This medal is also for all those moms who weren’t necessarily able to live their dreams, but their kids are now their dreams,” Meyers Taylor said. “Because those people keep me grounded. Those people kept me going and those people are the ones who reach out to me when things are hard and encourage me.”

Said Humphries: “To be the best, you have to have balance in life and in everything. But it doesn’t mean that it's 50–50. There are certain times—the Olympics being one—where I have to give 100% to sport and then there are going to be times when I give 110% to my son and being a mom.”

Even while competing at the Olympics, both women were trying to juggle mom duty with sporting excellence. Humphries said the two nights before the monobob competition began were the first she had spent away from Aulden since he was born. Meyers Taylor said she was shopping for snacks for the kids in Cortina.

The journey into motherhood was complicated for both women. Meyers Taylor’s sons are deaf, and Nico has Down syndrome—the boys travel the bobsled circuit with her for months at a time. Humphries had severe endometriosis, so in vitro fertilization was both necessary and arduous—three times, the embryo transfer failed before finally succeeding with Aulden. Navigating those challenges while remaining among the elite bobsledders in the world is a staggering accomplishment.

The two women have lived contemporaneous lives, athletically and personally. They both have won medals in five straight Olympics, from 2010 to ’26, sharing podiums from North America to Asia to Europe. (Humphries competed for Canada from 2010–18, but was a part of Team USA at the ’22 Games and this year.) 

“Elana is somebody who puts the very best of what she’s got forward every single day,” Humphries said. “And it challenges me to do the same thing. And I think together we make each other stronger. I don’t think you'd get the results from Elana, and you certainly wouldn’t get them from me, if we didn’t have each other.”

In a sport where the margins of victory are often fractions of seconds, Humphries has generally gotten the better of the matchup. Meyers Taylor had three silver medals and two bronze coming into Cortina, while Humphries had three gold and a bronze. Now, for the first time in an Olympic competition, Meyers Taylor wound up on the top step.

In 2014, Humphries beat Meyers Taylor by a tenth of a second for gold. In 2018, Meyers Taylor missed gold by .07 seconds in the two-woman sled behind a German pair. Monday night, she was finally on the right side of an eye-blink of time, defeating German Laura Nolte by .04 seconds.

Meyers Taylor posted a track record in Cortina before her fourth and final run sent her into first place. | Carmen Mandato/Getty Images

Nolte led by .15 seconds entering the final heat, with Meyers Taylor second and Humphries another .09 seconds back in third. Racing in reverse order, Humphries took a brief lead, then Meyers Taylor squeezed past her by .12 seconds—slapping the top of her sled twice and raising a celebratory fist after hitting the finish line.

All that remained was Nolte’s final run. With an American flag wrapped around her, Meyers Taylor watched and wondered whether she was going to be left with silver once again.

But Nolte banged around the course just enough. Meyers Taylor leaped in the air in celebration, then relayed the news to her sons via sign language with a glowing smile on her face.

“I still can’t even put into words what this means,” she said. “Having the gold medal, it’s still surreal, but it still is everything and it still is nothing. Because at the end of the day, in six days I got school pickups and drop-offs in the middle of Texas. My boys are my motivation for this. My boys are the reason I kept going, and so it means nothing because I’m still just mom to them. I got more bling to hang around my neck, but at the end of the day they just want be cuddled and held and that’s what’s going to happen.”