The mother who has moved the Olympic Games: gold at 41 years old and two deaf children

BarcelonaIn a Hollywood office, someone is already negotiating the rights to make a film about Elana Meyers Taylor's life. Her story deserves it because it has all the right ingredients: overcoming adversity, pain, a dream, and a happy ending. The Olympic Games, as is often the case in life, host stories as dark as the souls of many people, whether due to doping or corruption, but also others with their own light that move us. And Meyers Taylor's story is one of the latter, one of the good ones.

At 41, this American athlete has won her sixth Olympic medal. It might seem like just another medal, but the previous ones were silver or bronze. Gold always eluded her. And finally, she has reached the tournament of monobob of the Milan-Cortina 2026 Winter Olympic Games. That is to say, bobsleigh Single-handed, with only one crew member. With a time of 3:57.93, she beat Germany's Laura Nolte by just 4 hundredths of a second and her compatriot Kaillie Armbruster Humphries, the defending champion, by 12 hundredths. When she saw she was champion, she couldn't stop crying with emotion. And she hugged her children. Keys to understanding her story.

Elana Meyers Taylor is the mother of two children, ages 3 and 5. Both were born prematurely and are deaf. Her older brother also has Down syndrome, which makes communication very difficult for him, and he needs special hearing aids. Elana is never apart from them and has struggled to find the money to support herself as a professional athlete, competing on a circuit with events in Europe, taking her two young sons with her. They had a wonderful time yesterday. Sometimes she slept in rented vans to save money for her children while her husband continued working in the United States. It's been a very difficult path for various reasons. One of them is racial. In a sport with few Black athletes, she has experienced racism, insults from rival coaches, and even had equipment rejected by a brand. bobsleigh of selling her equipment, believing that a Black woman wouldn't know how to use it. Her complaints led to an investigation being opened within the International Olympic Committee and the United States Olympic Committee.

But how did a woman born in Georgia, in the South, where there is no tradition of snow sports, get into this sport? Elana entered the bobsleigh In 2006, while watching the Games on television, his mother told him that with his leg strength, he might do well. He already had a passion for sports, having done track and field and practiced softballa variant of baseball. Furthermore, his father, Eddie Meyers, had been an American football player, although he didn't make it to the NFL and ended up in the army, being marineSo the family moved around the country a lot. With perseverance, Meyers Taylor managed to improve, and just four years after deciding she wanted to try the sport, she won a medal at the 2010 Vancouver Games. bobsleigh It also led her to meet her husband, Nick Taylor, who was part of the US team but never made it to the Olympics. He now works as an NBA injury specialist and supports his wife, with both of them learning sign language to communicate with their children.

During his career, he has suffered several accidents, as these vehicles descend at high speeds. On two occasions, he sustained a severe concussion, and he has already announced that when he is no longer competing, he will donate his brain to science for research into the impact of severe head injuries. Tireless, he has competed for years in the two-person category, but in this Olympic cycle, he opted for the monobobIt's worked out perfectly for her. "I have a great team around me, whether it's my husband, my children, who are real soldiers, and my family. We'll never stop taking the children everywhere; they'll come with us, and we'll accompany them. It's been very hard for me to get here, so no, I haven't fully processed it yet, and I doubt I will for a while," she said after winning the gold medal.

Elana Meyers Taylor, who had won silver in Sochi in 2014 and in Pyeongchang in 2018, bobsleigh With two children, as well as two bronze medals in Vancouver in 2010 and Beijing in 2022, she has become the oldest athlete to ever compete in the Winter Games by winning an individual gold medal, adding to an already impressive record that confirms her as the most decorated Black athlete ever at the Olympics. She also ties with figure skater Bonnie Blair for the most medals won by an American woman at a Winter Games. A happy ending to a story full of obstacles and love—Elana's love for her children.