When Elana Meyers Taylor decided shortly after her fourth Olympics in 2022 that she would continue bobsledding, moments like what are coming the next two weekends were a big reason why.
Meyers Taylor, a five-time Olympic medalist and now a mom of two boys, wanted to be able to race on a home U.S. track again.
Such as in Lake Placid, New York, site of the World Bobsled and Skeleton Championships that run from Thursday through March 16.
These are the first bobsled and skeleton worlds to be held in the U.S. since 2012.
For Meyers Taylor, it will be her second time in the last six years that she gets to race against the world’s best on an American track.
She took the 2019-20 season off to have her first son, Nico, in February 2020.
The annual World Cup circuit then stayed entirely in Europe in the COVID-affected 2020-21 and 2021-22 seasons. Meyers Taylor then had her second son, Noah, in November 2022 and was on maternity leave for the 2022-23 season, when the World Cup returned to North America.
Last March, Meyers Taylor, who travels with her boys and a nanny, did get to race on a U.S. track for the first time as a mom for a World Cup stop in Lake Placid. And now she can do it at what she expects to be her last world championships.
She plans to leave competitive bobsledding after the 2026 Milan Cortina Olympics.
“The only thing missing from my resume at this point is Olympic gold medal,” Meyers Taylor, who has three silvers and two bronzes, said before this season. “I’ve done everything else. I’ve accomplished a lot in this sport. But to have the opportunity, one last time, to go after it, you can’t pass that up.”
Last winter, Meyers Taylor became the oldest female driver to win a world bobsled championships medal with a silver in the monobob at age 39.
She was the only non-German bobsledder to win a medal at those worlds in Winterberg, Germany.
Based on results this season, the best chance for anyone to beat German bobsledders in Lake Placid will come in the women’s monobob this Saturday and Sunday.
Meyers Taylor, plus fellow American Kaysha Love and Australian Bree Walker combined to win the last four World Cup monobob races. Meyers Taylor’s triumphs on Jan. 24 and 25 in St. Moritz, Switzerland, marked her first World Cup victories since having Noah.
Germans Laura Nolte, Lisa Buckwitz and Kim Kalicki combined to win the other 11 races this season between two-woman and monobob.
The U.S. also boasts Kaillie Humphries, who won monobob’s Olympic debut in 2022.
Humphries, the only female bobsledder with three Olympic gold medals, returned to competition this season after having her first child, son Aulden, in June. She has a season’s best World Cup finish of fourth in the two-woman event.
Humphries said in December that she needed time to get back to where she wanted physically. In her first World Cup run of the season on Dec. 7, one of her hamstrings locked up three-quarters of the way into her opening push sprint.
“My body is finally starting to show signs of performance again but we still have a ways to go,” she posted on social media on Jan. 28. “I’m giving myself grace as I knew it would take some time to get back physically. Each day I get stronger, faster and stay healthy is a win.”
In men’s bobsled, Germans Francesco Friedrich and Johannes Lochner combined to win 13 of the 15 World Cup events this season.
Frank Del Duca has been the lone American men’s driver on the World Cup this winter. His best finish was fourth.
The pool of U.S. push athletes includes a Summer Olympic medalist — Manteo Mitchell, who broke a fibula during his 2012 Olympic 4x400m preliminary relay leg on the track, completed his lap and ended up earning silver.
The skeleton events — men, women and a mixed team event that makes its Olympic debut in 2026 — kick off worlds on Thursday and are all done by Saturday.
U.S. sliders have historically performed well in Lake Placid.
At the 2009 Worlds in luge, Erin Hamlin snapped a German 99-race win streak in major international competition.
At the 2012 Worlds in bobsled, Steven Holcomb swept the two- and four-man world titles and Meyers Taylor earned her first world medal as a driver (bronze).
Also that year, Katie Uhlaender won a world title in skeleton. Uhlaender is on the team for this year’s worlds and could make a U.S. record-tying sixth Winter Olympics in 2026.
The top U.S. skeleton slider the past two seasons has been a relative newcomer — Mystique Ro, a former college track and field athlete.
Last March, Ro became the first American to win a World Cup skeleton race in eight years. Where was that race? Lake Placid.
