From Cortina d’Ampezzo, ITA
(February 16, 2026) – The 2025/2026 IBSF World Cup season was not kind to Elana Meyers Taylor. Racing most of the season with a nagging back injury, the 41 year old pilot struggled off the start block and despite some good driving only saw one top five finish all season.
But a couple weeks to rest after the World Cup season did a world of good, and not only did Meyers Taylor find her start, but she slid better than anyone as she won her first career Olympic gold medal.
Trailing Germany’s Laura Nolte after two heats, Meyers Taylor was the second off in the third heat. Nolte had just put down a track record run in her third effort, but Meyers bested it by .07 to close the gap to the World Cup champion to within .15.
After Meyers Taylor’s track record run, teammate Kaillie Armbruster Humphries was up next, and matched Meyers Taylor’s track record run to close to within .24 of Nolte, making it a three-way race for gold in the final heat.
In that final heat, Armbruster Humphries led things off among the contenders for gold. While her start wasn’t quite up to par with the other leaders, her driving was impeccable as she slid to a .77 lead over Germany’s Lisa Buckwitz, who’d moved up to fourth.
Meyers Taylor was next. As she’d done all race, Meyer Taylor put down a top five start as part of her best four starts of the year. It felt like, at least at the time, she’d left the door wide open with her drive. A few mistakes, including a long skid out of the K2 curve midway down, brought her back to Armbruster Humphries but she held on for the lead with Nolte still to go.
A clean drive would give Nolte the victory. But there were issues early on, nothing egregious but enough bumps and skids to bring the World Cup champ back to Meyers Taylor. But Nolte was cleaner from the K2 curve below, and made up ground late. However she ran out of track, and crossed the finish line .04 back to take silver, while Meyers Taylor won her first gold medal of the season, and first Olympic gold medal of her illustrious career.
The win gave Meyers Taylor two medals in two Olympic monobob races and her sixth Olympic medal of her career, matching Bonnie Blair for the most winter Olympic medals for an American. And at 41 years old, she became the oldest American gold medalist in the Winter Games.
“I still can’t believe it. I still can’t even put into words what this means…having the gold medal,” Meyers Taylor told the media after the race. “It’s still surreal. But at the end of the day, in six days I’ve got school pickups and drop-offs in the middle of Texas.”
Nolte’s silver was Germany’s first in monobob and second medal of her Olympic career. Afterward, she could not hide her disappointment in her final run.
“It’s just a bit of a shame because it doesn’t feel like a silver medal won, but more like gold lost,” she told the media after the race. “It was so close, I was in the lead for gold for three runs, and that’s why it’s such a disappointment. Elana totally deserved it, but it would have been possible if I hadn’t made that mistake in the upper part of the track.”
For Armbruster Humphries, the bronze is her fifth medal of her Olympic career.
Buckwtiz finished fourth, up from sixth overnight, with Melanie Hasler fifth after setting the quick time in the final heat. Canada’s Melissa Lotholz rallied from 14th in the first heat to slide to sixth.
The United States placed all three sleds in the top seven, with Kaysha Love into seventh, just ahead of World Cup season runner-up Bree Walker in eighth.
Cynthia Appiah had a disaster of a third run to fall out of the top ten, but had the fifth quickest run of the final heat to finish 13th. One spot behind Appiah was Mica Moore, who tied the best ever finish by a Jamaican bobsled pilot in 14th.
Results:
| Pos | Name | Nation | Bib | Run 1 | Run 2 | Run 3 | Run 4 | Total |
| 1 | Elana Meyers Taylor | USA | 10 | 59.49 | 59.85 | 59.08 | 59.51 | 3:57.93 |
| 2 | Laura Nolte | GER | 1 | 59.44 | 59.68 | 59.15 | 59.70 | 3:57.97 |
| 3 | Kaillie Armbruster Humphries | USA | 4 | 59.78 | 59.65 | 59.08 | 59.54 | 3:58.05 |
| 4 | Lisa Buckwitz | GER | 3 | 60.06 | 59.98 | 59.11 | 59.67 | 3:58.82 |
| 5 | Melanie Hasler | SUI | 8 | 59.98 | 59.92 | 59.72 | 59.37 | 3:58.99 |
| 6 | Melissa Lotholz | CAN | 6 | 60.38 | 59.84 | 59.39 | 59.63 | 3:59.24 |
| 7 | Kaysha Love | USA | 9 | 59.54 | 60.47 | 59.21 | 60.05 | 3:59.27 |
| 8 | Bree Walker | AUS | 2 | 60.19 | 60.01 | 59.60 | 59.69 | 3:59.49 |
| 9 | Maja Voigt | DEN | 14 | 60.10 | 60.16 | 59.70 | 59.89 | 3:59.85 |
| 10 | Margot Boch | FRA | 11 | 60.02 | 60.30 | 59.79 | 59.84 | 3:59.95 |
| 11 | Debora Annen | SUI | 12 | 60.55 | 60.32 | 60.16 | 59.73 | 4:00.76 |
| 12 | Qing Ying | CHN | 23 | 60.28 | 60.31 | 60.37 | 60.13 | 4:01.09 |
| 13 | Cynthia Appiah | CAN | 7 | 60.11 | 60.18 | 61.23 | 59.61 | 4:01.13 |
| 14 | Mica Moore | JAM | 20 | 60.55 | 60.43 | 60.41 | 59.92 | 4:01.31 |
| 15 | Kim Kalicki | GER | 13 | 60.14 | 60.98 | 60.62 | 59.59 | 4:01.33 |
| 16 | Mingming Huai | CHN | 21 | 60.41 | 61.00 | 59.95 | 58.98 | 4:01.34 |
| 17 | Linda Weiszewski | POL | 17 | 60.77 | 60.66 | 60.11 | 60.00 | 4:01.54 |
| 18 | Adele Nicoll | GBR | 16 | 60.54 | 60.29 | 60.00 | 61.03 | 4:01.86 |
| 19 | Kelly van Petegem | BEL | 24 | 61.14 | 60.50 | 60.42 | 60.10 | 4:02.16 |
| 20 | Viktoria Cernanska | SVK | 19 | 60.83 | 60.81 | 60.55 | 60.65 | 4:02.84 |
| 21 | Sin-Rong Lin | TPE | 15 | 60.61 | 61.30 | 60.36 | 3:02.27 | |
| 22 | Yooran Kim | KOR | 18 | 60.96 | 60.90 | 60.51 | 3:02.37 | |
| 23 | Simona de Silvestro | ITA | 22 | 61.04 | 60.80 | 60.68 | 3:02.52 | |
| 24 | Giada Andreutti | ITA | 25 | 61.21 | 60.76 | 61.10 | ||
| DNS | Katrin Beierl | AUT | 5 | 60.34 | 60.82 | DNS |