Why motherhood was key to Elana Meyers Taylor grabbing that elusive gold medal

By Dana O’Neil, CNN

Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy (CNN) — The gold medal that long eluded her finally hanging around her neck, Elana Meyers Taylor immediately laughed off any notion that she was in the middle of a life-changing moment.

“In six days, I’ve got school pick up and drop offs in the middle of Texas,” she said, while wearing her Team USA parka and snow pants. “Like none of this stuff, I can’t wear any of it when I go home.”

So much of these Olympic Games have felt like a lesson in perspective. Gained and lost. Appreciated over time and sometimes delivered with abruptness. Hard earned in some cases. Life earned in all.

The singular focus required to be an Olympic athlete has hardly been abandoned but its edges have been softened by medalists who have been through some stuff: failure, injury, disappointment and – in the case of two women standing in a makeshift media interview zone at the top of the Cortina Curling Center – motherhood.

Seconds after she watched German Laura Nolte cross the finish line a mere .04 behind her to secure that elusive gold, Meyers Taylor crumbled to the ground, the American flag draped around her.

Soon her two boys, Noah and Nico, found her – unsure about the commotion and clearly uninterested in the magnitude of the moment. Now with her sixth Olympic medal across five Games, their mom is officially tied with Bonnie Blair as the most decorated female American Winter Olympian in history. Noah and Nico just wanted to snuggle.

Meantime, her teammate Kaillie Armbrusrer Humphries, who took bronze, has now medaled in five consecutive Olympics. Her 15-month-old son, Aulden – who she’s pretty sure napped through the actual event – was more interested in running around in the snow than posing with mom for a picture on the podium.

“I grabbed him and his eyes were like this,” said Humphries, closing her own eyes half-mast. “And I was like, ‘Sorry, kid but I’m getting this moment with you.’ But he honestly couldn’t care less.”

Such is life for any mother, even those with brand new shiny necklaces.

Lest anyone be snookered, theirs is not some Hallmark version of motherhood. It’s real and it’s messy. Needing to prep for her race, Humphries spent her first night away from Aulden this week. It was necessary and awful all at once.

“Mom guilt is a thing,” she said.

“But I needed to do it in order to be my best.”

There is a beautiful serendipity in the fact that Meyers Taylor finally got the gold she’d been dreaming of since college at a time in her life when it mattered the least.

“It means everything and nothing” has been her mantra as these Games approached, a full pivot since her college years, when the one-time softball all-American at George Washington wanted only to play the sport for Team USA.

She maybe even wanted it too much; a tryout went about as bad as it could, Meyers Taylor’s want turning her into an error-prone pile of nerves. She pivoted to bobsled after her parents saw it on TV and, approaching it with the casualness of a newbie, found the Olympic quest she long sought. By 2010, she was winning silver in the two-woman, the start of a run of a five-for-five medal-to-Games ratio.

But the gold medal dangled just out of reach and, while it didn’t define her, she rightly wanted it. And then Nico arrived in 2020 and Noah in 2023.

Both boys are deaf and Noah also has Down’s syndrome. They require therapy and special care and Meyers Taylor delegates none of it. With the support of her husband Nic, a retired bobsledder, she kept going in her career, but there were plenty of days where bobsledding felt more like an afterthought.

Oddly, she didn’t care. Instead, she found peace in the chaos, recognizing that no medal – gold, silver or bronze – would define her.

“One of the things my husband said to me before this race was, ‘We’re not going to let two curves stop us,’” she said. “We’ve been through too much as a family.”

At 41, she also knew the endgame was in sight and when she suffered a horrible crash in January, just three weeks before the Games, she thought surely this wasn’t her time. Instead, Meyers Taylor and Humphries both dropped track record times in the third heat, putting the pressure on Nolte who led .15 after the third heat.

Since the leaders go in reverse order, Humphries stacked up before Meyers Taylor who then gave way to Nolte. The difference between the three is about as narrow as a sliver of snow – a combined time of 3:57.93 for Meyers Taylor, 3:57.97 for Nolte and 3:58.05 for Humphries.

As her boys crashed around her, Meyers Taylor signed to them. She had taught them “bobsled race” earlier.

“I also taught them gold medal,” she said.

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