Elana Meyers Taylor holds one of the most decorated resumes in sports.. Five-time Olympic medalist, four-time world champion. The most decorated Black Winter Olympic athlete of all time. Mother of two. Disability advocate.
It’s those last two that are perhaps the most meaningful to the U.S. bobsledder, who married fellow sliding athlete Nicholas Taylor in 2014 and gave birth to sons Nico and Noah in 2020 and 2022. “My boys travel with me as much as possible,” she said. “All season long, six months on the road, they’re with me.”
Nico was born deaf and with Down Syndrome, and Noah was born deaf, and while Meyers Taylor has been a vocal athlete advocate her entire sporting career, raising them has shaped the way she sees the world.
“I’d always been a representative on my sport governing bodies, to represent athletes and to try and push for better resources,” Meyers Taylor said. In 2019, she was president of the Women’s Sports Foundation after working on their athlete board, and much of her work had been directed towards furthering the rights of gender-related inequities in sport. (Meyers Taylor was the first woman to earn a spot on the U.S. National Team competing in the four-man bobsled event, and the first woman to win a medal in international competition in a men’s event.)
In 2022, Meyers Taylor joined the Georgia Council on Developmental Disabilities, and she has worked with many non-profit organizations, including Classroom Champions, Right to Play, the Global Down Syndrome Foundation and, a particular favorite, Gigi’s Playhouse.
“What drew me to [GiGi’s Playhouse] was just needing to find services for my son,” Meyers Taylor said. Born during the COVID-19 pandemic, Nico arrived when many resources the new parents could have leaned on were shut down. GiGi’s was one of the first to offer their play-based educational and support programs virtually.
Elana Meyers Taylor: Meet the Athlete
“We were really looking for community at that time,” she said. “And then once we were using their services, it was like, ‘Oh, wow, this is really great. What can I do to help them in return? How do I make this better known?’ That’s when I just started putting stickers on my helmet and spreading the word and volunteering for them.”
The 2026 Milan Cortina Winter Olympics will be Meyers Taylor’s fifth Games, and likely her last bid for an elusive gold medal. Setting her sights on this goal with two small children in tow has meant some realignment of her commitments. For now, she’s stepped down from many of her committee roles, focusing instead on using her social media platform to grow awareness and show what disability looks like on a day-to-day basis.
“I think the biggest problem we have in this society is that we don’t value those who aren’t able to achieve as much,” she said. “It’s weird coming from an Olympic athlete, because people think, ‘Oh, you have a certain status because of what you’ve achieved.’ But at the end of the day, I’m a full proponent of everyone having value regardless of what they achieve, and I think that’s a message that needs to be spread.”
Meyers Taylor said that all the organizations she’s worked with continue to share that message, especially when it comes to Down Syndrome, which far fewer people come into contact with compared to a disability like deafness. But she added that awareness of all forms of disability is still desperately needed
While Meyers Taylor has not announced plans to retire, she will be 41 during the Olympic Games in February, and she has already enjoyed an enviably long career in one of the fastest and most dangerous sports on ice, despite starting relatively late. As a teenager, she had dreamed of going to the Olympics for women’s softball. She fell only slightly short of that goal, not quite making the cut in 2008. Then she found bobsled, made the national team in her rookie season and never looked back.
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When it is finally time to step away from competition, Meyers Taylor said she knows she will lean more fully into advocacy work. She is particularly interested in working with the Special Olympics — an organization that has provided athletic training and competition to those with intellectual disabilities for nearly six decades.
“What people don’t know about the Special Olympics is they also provide different medical and dental services to people with disabilities, on top of the sport function,” she said. “I would love to work for them, because I feel like it would combine my two passions of disability and sport.”
For now, Meyers Taylor isn’t entirely sure what her next steps post-competitive career will be, but she does see herself staying connected with sports no matter what.
“Sport is just a great vehicle to learn,” she said. “It can teach confidence and work ethic and discipline and all these great attributes. But I think for the disability community in particular, it’s really important, because it allows them the freedom to be themselves in spaces designed for them, where they can uniquely express themselves, physically, mentally and emotionally.”
Heading into her final Olympic Games with her eyes firmly set on a gold medal — the only thing missing from her resumé — while raising two children with very specific needs is, “Chaos on a daily basis,” she said. And making sure her boys have the therapies and education tools they need while on the road is, she admits, a huge challenge.
“I’m not going to sit here and say it’s not hard. It’s hard,” she said. Meyers Taylor credits her teammates, coaches, support staff and everyone in her inner circle for making it all possible. And while some days are harder, the hardships are outweighed by everything her boys give her.
Despite the chaos, she said life is also slower. She’s learned to take things as they come — something of a gift for the ambitious athlete. Nico didn’t walk until aged five, and before that, he hit many of the milestones a parent watches for far later than other children. Every win, every small development deserves celebration in a way that feels more meaningful to Meyers Taylor.
“Immediately after I got off the line in 2018 (where she earned a silver medal), we were shouting ‘Four more years, four more years!’ — not even taking the moment to really celebrate. Like, can we just live in the moment right now? That’s a hard thing for athletes,” she said.
It’s thanks to her boys that she’s learned to fully live in the moments her sport can still give her, and it’s thanks to them that she was introduced to the communities she looks forward to once again working with — when the Olympics are behind her.
“Nico has taught me to slow down, he’s taught me patience, he’s taught me advocacy and how to be a strong advocate, because you have to fight for what you need,” she said. “Especially in a world that wasn’t built for you.”
Throughout the winter, in a series called Hometown Hopefuls, NBC is spotlighting the stories of Olympic and Paralympic athletes from across the United States as they work towards the opportunity to represent their country at the 2026 Milan Cortina Olympics. We’ll learn about their paths to their sports’ biggest stage, the communities that have been formative along the way, and the causes they’re committed to in their hometowns and around the world. Visit nbcsports.com/hometown-hopefuls for more stories on the road to Milan Cortina.
