From Lake Placid USA / Igls AUT
(August 12, 2026) – The reigning Olympic monobob champion will not race in the coming season.
Elana Meyers Taylor, the most decorated American women’s bobsled athlete, announced on Wednesday that she will be sitting out the coming season due to post-concussive symptoms. Those symptoms “have made it impossible to prepare and train for the upcoming season” Meyers Taylor said in a statement.
Meyers Taylor leaving the team for the season will leave the United States very short handed for women’s bobsled. Kaillie Armbruster Humprhies announced in July that she was pregnant with her second child, meaning she’ll also be out for at least the coming season. That leaves Kaysha Love as the top pilot for the United States, with Lauren Brzozowski likely moving into the USA-2 spot.
Currently only Brzozowski and Sylvia Hoffman meet the IBSF qualification standards for the United States at the pilot position, with Sydney Milani as the fourth active pilot but short the IBSF standards for World Cup.
Madeleine Egle to Return to Action
Barring injury or a large shakeup in the Austrian program, Madeleine Egle will be returning to the FIL World Cup for the coming season.
Egle was serving a 20-month ban for an anti-doping rule violation after committing three whereabouts failures within a 12 month period. The suspension was effective beginning March 1, 2025 and expires October 31, 2026.
After the suspension was announced, Egle left it very unclear as to whether or not she would return to action. But on Wednesday Egle posted a video to Instagram stating she was back.
In a statement to the International Luge Federation press, Egle said “The decision to return to elite sport was not spontaneous, it has grown over the past months. I want to compete again and be successful. My last race was in February 2025, it will definitely take patience, and it remains to be seen whether the road to La Plagne is the right one for me.”