How Elana Meyers Taylor's Faith and Family Shine Brighter Than Gold

The 2026 Winter Olympics concluded with several victories for Team USA, one of its 12 gold medals coming from Elana Meyers Taylor. She is now the oldest woman to win gold in Winter Olympic history. Even with a nail-biting victory, the 41-year-old bobsledder is no stranger to overcoming challenges.

In a widely shared moment after Meyers Taylor won gold, she turned to her sons to reassure them. 3-year-old Noah and 5-year-old Nico are both deaf, and Nico has a Down syndrome diagnosis. Their mother turned to them to sign that she was okay when she began crying after winning gold.

"It was one of those genuinely parent moments. We didn't really realize what was going on. We were just trying to keep them calm, and just trying to reassure them because they saw mommy crying and they didn't know what was going on, so I wanted to try to explain 'hey, mommy's okay'" Meyers Taylor told TODAY.

Meyers Taylor's Olympic journey began in 2009, when her mother encouraged her to switch from softball. She won a world championship in bobsled that same year and has since competed in five Olympic Games, starting in 2010, earning six medals, including her first gold on February 16.

Amid her athletic achievements, Meyers Taylor has always prioritized her family.

“They mean everything to me, and at the end of the day, if I win medals or lose medals, it doesn’t matter, because I’m still mom to them. I still get to go home and get cuddles,” Meyers Taylor told The Daily Citizen.

Meyers Taylor's parenting journey began in 2020, when Nico spent time in the NICU amid the early COVID-19 lockdowns.

“We had tried for a year to have Nico, so we didn’t do any of the genetic testing beforehand,” Meyers Taylor told website She Knows. “For us, it didn’t matter. We were going to keep him regardless.”

Meyers Taylor and her husband Nic Taylor quickly made a plan to help Nico thrive while continuing her training for the 2022 Olympic Games. For Meyers Taylor, the focus has been less on success than on perseverance, a value she aims to instill in her sons.

“You can only be driven so much by a gold medal,” she told The Global Down Syndrome Foundation.

The Taylors bring Nico and his brother Noah to every event. Behind that widely shared moment on February 16 is a faithful mother demonstrating to her sons their inherent dignity and ability to persevere. As she told NBC,

“Parenting my two sons with disabilities has done everything for me. It’s given me patience, it’s given me the drive to keep going, and it’s made me realize that even my worst days on bobsled are better than the worst days as a parent.”

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The 2026 Winter Olympics was not without controversy surrounding athletes' political beliefs and personal backgrounds. Take Alysa Liu, for example, who has become the center of a political discussion on how the Right treats a “woke” athlete versus how the Left decries the U.S. hockey team for engaging in a phone call with President Trump. There’s also the matter of Liu’s background, as she was raised by a single father who obtained five children via surrogacy.

In a culture quick to embrace controversy, Elana Meyers Taylor’s quiet faithfulness is refreshing. She is a Christian who has spoken and lived out of several important truths. She loudly affirms the dignity of all humans, including her deaf, Down syndrome son, a diagnosis with one of the leading abortion rates in the world. It was never a question for Elana and Nic Taylor whether Nico would be allowed to live. The immediate question was how they would help him thrive. The same is true for younger son Noah, battling his own hearing loss.

Taylor also shows faithfulness in her priorities, prizing her family’s well-being over winning medals. Even as she receives help to care for her sons during the Games, she keeps them close and looks forward to returning to them after competition. Elana Meyers Taylor is a bright example of a phrase we use frequently at The Center for Biblical Unity: Justice begins at home.