This year at the PyeongChang 2018 Olympic Games in South Korea, Elana Meyers Taylor will be looking to gain her first Olympic gold medal.
Competing in her third Olympics, the Olympic bobsledder won the bronze as a brakeman in 2010, and then silver as a driver in 2014. This year, along with her teammate Lauren Gibbs, they are once again strong medal contenders in South Korea.
A six-time world championship medalist, Meyers Taylor says she’ll compete and do her best, but her motivation is not to simply win medals and achieve success, but to honor the One who created her.
“At the end of the day, I’m in this sport to glorify God,” she told Athletes in Action, “so if that means I come in last place or I win the gold medal, that’s what I’m going to do.”
“One of the big reasons I was put in bobsled is to help people not only reach their goals, but come to Christ,” Meyers says. “God put me here for a specific reason and I don’t think it’s just to win medals.”
Meyers Taylor is married to a fellow bobsledder and a member of the U.S. bobsled team, Nic Taylor.
The couple met at a Bible study in upstate New York in 2011. As they trained together near the U.S. Olympic Training Center in Lake Placid, N.Y., they became close friends, engaged and eventually married in 2014.
The Taylors also were baptized together in Saranac Lake by their pastor Ryan Schneider.
“Nic got baptized first,” Schneider said. “Then he helped me baptize Elana. It was really a powerful statement.”
Nic and Elana are unique because they not only do life together as husband and wife, but also in competition. In 2015, she won the gold medal at the World Championships, becoming the first American woman to accomplish such a feat. She repeated as champion last year. The couple also made history together in 2015 when Elana became the first American woman to pilot a four-man bobsled — with her husband as her brakeman — in an international men’s competition.
“Being able to do it with your best friend — who happens to be your wife — is awesome,” Nic said to FCA. “It makes the road a lot easier. Things aren’t nearly as hard as they could be if I was on this path alone.”
Elana will compete in the Olympic women’s bobsled competition starting Tuesday, February 20.
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– American Chris Corning among Olympic medal contenders in slopestyle, big air snowboarding
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