Recruiting new female bobsledders is priority for Elana Meyers Taylor
PYEONGCHANG, South Korea – A few weeks after her Olympics are over, U.S. bobsled pilot Elana Meyers Taylor plans to spend a lot of time on social media. But rather than starting Twitter fights or posting Instagram selfies, her cause will be a more noble one: Recruiting her eventual replacement.
And she does it by any means necessary, whether it’s scouting college softball games on television, canvassing strength and conditioning coaches at top college athletics programs or simply lobbying them on Facebook to give bobsled a try.
“I get a ton of ‘nos,’” Meyers Taylor said. “But that’s never stopped me before.”
The pitch is a simple one to young women who have exhibited athletic attributes in other sports like strength and sprinting speed that would come in handy on a bobsled. If you ever thought about competing in the Olympics, Meyers Taylor tells them, here’s an opportunity in a sport you don’t have to spend your entire life trying to master.
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And while Meyers Taylor’s efforts have already paid off – her brakeman at these Olympics, Lauren Gibbs, transitioned from power lifting just four years ago – she’s hoping success at these Games combined with her recruiting pitch in the coming months will replenish the ranks for 2022 and beyond.
“We really try to take advantage of this opportunity,” she said. “Every four years it’s about rebuilding and making sure we have a fresh crop of athletes.”
As successful as the U.S. team has been since women’s bobsled was added to the Olympic program in 2002 – they’ve had at least one medalist in every competition – it’s not easy to sustain. Americans generally don’t grow up bobsledding, there isn’t a lot of money to be made in it and yet, it’s expensive to get on the World Cup circuit (imagine shipping a 365-pound sled and all the other equipment around the world in a crate).
Thus, women’s bobsledders aren’t really groomed as much as they’re converted, which is where Meyers Taylor is constantly on the lookout for prospects, reaching out to more than 100 per year by her estimation. Half of the women’s national team last year, she said, were her recruits, including former Baylor track and field star Kehri Jones, who was her brakeman last February when she won gold at the world championships.
How did she find Jones? By calling Baylor’s strength coach, Chris Ruf, and asking who might have the right attributes to make it in bobsled.
“It’s a sport that lends well to conversion,” said Meyers Taylor, who converted herself after her softball career ended. “And it lends well to athletes who have that multi-sport background because you’re athletic, you’re able to pick up new skills quickly and that’s really what it takes to be a bobsledder.
“As a brakeman you can come in in a short amount of time and win medals. But even if you never make an Olympic team, even if you don’t win a medal or a world championship medal, you have the chance to travel around the world and represent your country. This is the most amazing thing I could ever think of doing and who knows, you might make an Olympic team as well.”
That pitch also worked on Gibbs, a former all-Ivy League volleyball player at Brown, who was connected with Meyers Taylor through Olympic rugby player Jillion Potter. Gibbs, who has an MBA from Pepperdine and was working in a corporate job with an online retailer, eventually quit her job to give bobsled a shot, transformed her body from 205 pounds down to 170 and rose through the ranks to land the coveted slot as Meyers Taylor’s brakeman.
“She’s so powerful off the blocks,” Meyers Taylor said. “Off the first five meters of the sled, that’s really when you get the sled going. She’s better than anyone in the world at that portion so it really complements my style. Her powerlifting background but also her volleyball skills. We’ve been successful converting volleyball players in the past because of that jumping, that power. You have to go and spike a ball down someone’s throat. That’s a hidden gem of a conversion to bobsled.”
Jamie Greubel Poser, who will pilot the other U.S. sled, said bobsled is the perfect sport for women to be converted into because there are so few sports that allow them an opportunity to compete after college.
“For a lot of us, we didn’t know bobsled was an opportunity for us to pursue,” said Greubel Poser, who competed in the heptathlon and pentathlon at Cornell. “It wasn’t on my radar that I could be an Olympian because the sports I watched were sports like figure skating or gymnastics, things you had to do your entire life to even have a shot.”
Recruiting from more traditional women’s sports has also opened up opportunities for the U.S. Olympic team to become more diverse, which has been one of the U.S. Olympic Committee's primary goals over the last decade.
Aja Evans, a former sprinter and shot-putter at Illinois, said bobsled can be a turning point important in the participation of black women at the Winter Games, noting the celebrated Nigerian bobsled team that will compete this year.
“I had a pretty unique combination (with sprinting and shot put), but the consistent thing between those two was the power from my legs and being able to get up in the air when I threw the shot or get out of the blocks,” she said. “That’s basically what I do on the block in our sport now is you literally go from 0 to 100 and we’re moving 365-pound sled so you have to have that power for sure, and speed is a big portion of it. Track and field athletes usually transition pretty well because we’ve learned technique and how to run our whole lives. A lot of college athletes have potential in the sport of bobsled and don’t even know it.”