Five-time Olympic medalist Elana Meyers Taylor earned her first bobsled World Cup wins since having her second son, Noah, in November 2022.
Meyers Taylor captured monobob races on Friday and Saturday in St. Moritz, Switzerland.
“I know I can drive. I’ve just got to get my push (start) back, and I know I’d be able to compete, and today the push was there,” she said Friday.
Her first victory come by 24 hundredths of a second over Australian Bree Walker. American Kaysha Love was third, 55 hundredths behind combining times from two runs.
Then on Saturday, Meyers Taylor and Love gave the U.S. a one-two in a top-level bobsled event for the first time since Kaillie Humphries and Meyers Taylor did so in monobob’s Olympic debut in 2022.
Meyers Taylor notched her 20th and 21st career World Cup bobsled victories and first two in monobob. She previously won monobob races against World Cup-level fields when it was designated a World Series discipline.
St. Moritz is a special place. Husband Nic proposed to her there at the medal podium at the 2013 World Championships.
This season, Meyers Taylor’s best finish in nine previous World Cup events was fourth.
“My goals for the season are focused on world championships,” in March in Lake Placid, New York, she said before the season. “I want to win both monobob and two-man world championships. And really, for me, I’m 40 years old now. It’s not necessarily about winning every single World Cup. It’s not about winning World Cup overall (season title). I know I have to use this season to build to the biggest races of the year. ... I want to win every race I compete in, but I know realistically, with being 40, with being a parent, it’s going to ebb and flow. Some races, I’m going to feel like a million bucks. Other races, I’m going to feel like trash.”
Her last World Cup victory in the two-woman event was in January 2022. A month later, she came back from a COVID-19 bout to earn her fourth and fifth Olympic medals.
She is tied for fourth on the U.S. career Winter Olympic medals list behind Apolo Ohno (eight) and Bonnie Blair and Bode Miller (six).
Meyers Taylor took the 2022-23 season off for her second maternity leave. She returned last season and became the oldest female driver to win a world championships medal. Her monobob silver was the lone medal won by a non-German sled at those worlds.
She plans to make the 2026 Milan Cortina Olympics her final Games — should she make the team next winter.
“The only thing missing from my resume at this point is Olympic gold medal,” said Meyers Taylor, who has three silvers and two bronzes. “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.”
