Elana Meyers Taylor delivered the final piece missing from her Olympic résumé Monday night, claiming gold in the women’s monobob at the Milan Cortina Winter Games and setting a new benchmark in U.S. Olympic history.
The 41-year-old American completed four heats with a combined time of 3 minutes, 57.93 seconds, surging in the final run to overtake the field and secure the title. The victory makes Meyers Taylor the oldest American woman to win a gold medal at the Winter Olympics. She is also the oldest woman ever to win an Olympic bobsled medal, adding another distinction to her record-setting career.
Germany’s Laura Nolte finished second. American Kaillie Humphries Armbruster secured bronze in 3:58.05, earning her fifth Olympic medal. As her sled crossed the line, Humphries Armbruster raised her arms in celebration, assured of a podium finish. Kaysha Love, the reigning world monobob champion from the United States, placed seventh after difficulties in her second and fourth runs, finishing in 3:59.27.
The gold is Meyers Taylor’s sixth Olympic medal overall, tying speedskater Bonnie Blair for the most by a U.S. woman in Winter Games history. Before Monday’s race, she had earned three silver medals and two bronze across four Olympic appearances, and had never finished off the podium in an Olympic event she completed.
Monobob, a single-athlete event introduced at the Beijing 2022 Games, has quickly become a showcase for veteran pilots. Meyers Taylor won silver in the event’s Olympic debut in Beijing, where she also claimed bronze in the two-woman race with Sylvia Hoffman.
Humphries Armbruster captured gold in the inaugural monobob competition that year. Both athletes, now in their 40s, have medaled in each of their five Olympic appearances.
Meyers Taylor’s Olympic career began at Vancouver 2010, where she won bronze in the two-woman event after first making her mark with a silver medal at the 2009 World Championships in Lake Placid, New York. She followed with silver at Sochi 2014, in Russia, alongside Lauryn Williams and another silver at PyeongChang 2018, in South Korea, with Lauren Gibbs.
Her résumé extends beyond the Olympics. Meyers Taylor claimed two women’s world titles in 2015 and 2017 and, in November 2014, became one of the first women to compete in an international four-person bobsleigh race after the International Bobsleigh and Skeleton Federation permitted mixed-gender crews.
A California native born Oct. 10, 1984, Meyers Taylor attended George Washington University on a softball scholarship and later represented the United States in rugby sevens before focusing exclusively on bobsleigh. In 2018, she received an honorary Doctorate of Public Service award from the university.
