Elana Meyers Taylor wins second medal in what may be last Olympics: 'Felt like I was going to cry'
BEIJING – Moments before the final run Saturday night, another Olympic medal well within her grasp, Elana Meyers Taylor took a moment to process that it might well be her last time in a bobsled.
"I felt like I was going to cry actually," she said. "If this is the end, I really just want to enjoy it. If it is the last time I’m in the sled, and if it is my last Olympics run, I wanted to go out the way I wanted to."
When Meyers Taylor and brakeman Sylvia Hoffman reached the bottom of the track at Yanqing Sliding Center, having put down a flawless run that guaranteed a medal, her reaction said it all. Meyers Taylor threw her fist in the air and hopped out of the sled, gave Hoffman a huge hug and celebrated in front of her supporters with Team USA.
If this was the 37-year old’s final Olympics, it was one she couldn’t have been prouder of.
"It’s been a really long Olympics, a really long season, a long four years," she said. "Part of it was just relief to come down and cross the line and have another medal. It was also just being excited. We put in a lot of work for this."
BEIJING TEXT ALERTS: Get behind-the-scenes access to the Winter Olympics
FOLLOW THE CHASE FOR GOLD: Sign up for the Olympic newsletter and never miss a moment
USA MEDAL COUNT: Full list of every medal won by Team USA at Beijing Games
WHO LEADS THE MEDAL COUNT? How each country performed at the Winter Games
Meyers Taylor’s legacy as an all-time Winter Games athlete for the U.S. is undoubtedly secure. She participated in four Olympics, won five medals and was one of the driving forces to get women’s monobob added to the program this year. She finished second in that event to American Kaillie Humphries.
The only thing Meyers Taylor didn’t accomplish in the sport was win an Olympic gold medal, something she admits might have bothered her earlier in her career. But now? She can’t help but be "crazy satisfied."
Not only did Meyers Taylor become a mother in between Pyeongchang and Beijing, but her path was filled with obstacles – including a positive COVID-19 test when she arrived here that put her in isolation and undoubtedly impacted her preparation. Coming out of that, a silver and a bronze is a pretty nice haul to take home.
"I think after Sochi, I was really disappointed," she said. "I thought unless I had a gold medal, it said something about me or my career. But finally I started to realize its more about the journey and there’s a lot of things in competition you can’t control. In Pyeongchang, I tore my Achilles right before the event. Here I was in isolation. There’s so many things that happen you can’t control."
And after a rough beginning, with some less-than-stellar practice runs leading into the monobob and a first day that left her in fourth place, she certainly wouldn’t have predicted two medals. In fact, part of what made these Olympics so difficult was that she and Hoffman did not have a lot of experience together and had to build chemistry on the fly over the past few months.
"I’m really proud of Elana because she did the damn thing," Hoffman said. "She came out and went day by day, run by run. She took her time and tried to put it together. We all encouraged her like, ‘You’ve got this, you’ve done this before.’ The coaches, staff, her family I think it really helped because she’s been going through a lot. To do what she did through monobob and each run get better and better, and then she completely crushed it on race days. I was like, ‘Wow, this woman is on fire.’"
Meyers Taylor said she didn’t know what the long-term future would hold for her or whether she might consider coming back for one more Olympics. In the short-term, she plans on just being a mom – her son Nico’s second birthday is next week – and appreciating all the emotions she experienced in Beijing.
"I wanted to cry, I wanted to smile, I wanted to laugh, I wanted to do everything," she said. "Yes, I’ve been on Olympic podiums before but I can’t think of any that’s been harder to get than here. I can’t even put into words what this means."