--- title: Elana Meyers Taylor Won Gold at 41 Then Signed It to Her Sons description: At 41, Elana Meyers Taylor became the oldest woman to win individual Winter Olympics gold. She celebrated by signing to her deaf sons. author: Dr Marina Nani (Editor-in-Chief) date: 2026-02-17T10:25:49.000Z updated: 2026-03-04T18:08:36.206Z canonical: https://richwoman.co/article/elana-meyers-taylor-won-gold-at-41-then-signed-it-to-her-sons image: https://cdn.nanimediahouse.com/elana-meyers-taylor-monobob-cortina-2026.webp categories: Inspiration content_type: Feature region: Italy publication: Rich Woman Magazine --- The moment Elana Meyers Taylor crossed the finish line in Cortina d’Ampezzo, she didn’t reach for the flag. She looked for her boys. Nico, five, and Noah, three, were waiting by the track. Both are deaf. She signed to them from the podium, and if you watched it without knowing the backstory, you might have mistaken it for a wave. It wasn’t. ## The gold that took five Olympics to arrive Meyers Taylor has been doing this for a long time. She made the US bobsled team in her rookie season back in 2007. She competed in Vancouver, Sochi, Pyeongchang and Beijing, winning three silvers and two bronzes along the way. She was always on the podium but never at the top. On Monday, at 41, she changed that. Her final monobob run clocked 59.51 seconds, enough to overtake Germany’s Laura Nolte by four hundredths of a second. It was the kind of margin that makes you hold your breath. She is now the oldest woman ever to win an individual Winter Olympics gold and ties Bonnie Blair as the most decorated American woman in Winter Games history. She’s also the most decorated Black athlete in Winter Olympics history, though she’d probably rather you asked about her kids. ## Motherhood on the bobsled circuit Nico was born in 2020, during the pandemic. He has Down syndrome. Noah arrived in 2022. Both boys are deaf (a genetic mutation unrelated to Down syndrome), and Meyers Taylor has been learning American Sign Language alongside everything else. The boys travel the bobsled circuit with her for months at a time. ‘Years of breastfeeding, lack of sleep, back pain and getting older,’ she’s said of what [motherhood alongside elite sport](https://richwoman.co/article/us-open-champion-naomi-osaka-shows-power-in-prioritizing-mental-health) actually feels like. Then, without missing a beat: ‘I wouldn’t trade it for the world.’ ## Two mothers on the podium She wasn’t the only mother on the podium. Kaillie Humphries, 40, took bronze. Humphries had her son Aulden after multiple rounds of IVF (she was diagnosed with endometriosis) and returned to competition just four and a half months after giving birth. She’s barely spent two nights away from him since. Between them, these two women have competed at [five consecutive Olympic Games](https://richwoman.co/article/medal-surge-usa-women-lead-early-in-2024-paris-olympics). They helped convince the International Olympic Committee to add the monobob event in the first place, pushing for gender parity in a sport that hadn’t always made room for it. ## What the gold actually meant to her After the race, Meyers Taylor said something that will stay with a lot of people for a while: ‘This medal is also for all those mums who weren’t necessarily able to live their dreams, but their kids are now their dreams.’ She also said, with the kind of honesty that tends to cut through the noise: ‘I got more bling to hang around my neck, but at the end of the day they just want to be cuddled and held.’ There is a version of this story that’s about records and medals and margins of four hundredths of a second. But the version that matters is about a woman who refused to believe that the best parts of her life (her children, her career and the things that make her who she is) had to happen one at a time. ## In case you were wondering… **Q: Can mothers still compete at elite level in sport?** More and more are proving that they can. Athletes like Allyson Felix, Jessica Ennis-Hill and Serena Williams have all returned to competition after having children and performed at or near their best. Research has found that becoming a parent can bring a new sense of perspective and motivation, though the physical challenges of pregnancy and postpartum recovery are real. The key factor tends to be support (from federations, sponsors and family) rather than biology. **Q: Do athletes perform better after becoming parents?** There’s no simple answer, but some evidence suggests parenthood doesn’t diminish performance the way people once assumed. A 2022 study in Sports Medicine found that many elite athletes return to pre-pregnancy competition levels, and some exceed them. What changes most often isn’t physical ability but mental clarity. Several athletes have described feeling less anxious about results because sport is no longer the only thing that defines them. **Q: How has the perception of motherhood in sport changed?** It’s shifted considerably in the last decade. World Athletics describes the journey from ‘berated to celebrated’, noting that athlete mothers were once penalised through lost sponsorships, selection criteria and public criticism but are now more often supported. The biggest shift has come from athletes themselves, who’ve been vocal about their experiences. More federations now offer childcare at competitions, and the conversation has moved from whether mothers can compete to how the system can better support them.