Elana Meyers Taylor of the United States won her fourth career Olympic medal this week. On Saturday, she ranked No. 5 with a bronze medal in the two-man bobsleigh event.
Laura Nolte and Deborah Levi of Germany won the gold medal ahead of their compatriots Mariama Jamanka and Alexandra Burghardt. Meyers Taylor and her brakeman Sylvia Hoffman took third place, just ahead of another German luge.
A second American sled, driven by Kaillie Humphries, placed seventh.
But the presence of Meyers Taylor either among the leaders. She had won a medal in the event at three consecutive Olympics before arriving in Beijing, and she and Humphries are the most decorated women in bobsleigh, having stood on the medal podium at every Olympics since 2010.
Meyers Taylor, who won a silver medal behind Humphries in the first Olympic monobob competition, now has four more in the women’s two-man event: silver medals in Pyeongchang in 2018 and Sochi in 2014, and bronzes in Vancouver in 2010 and Beijing. In two of those Games — Vancouver and Sochi — Humphries won race gold for Canada.
Humphries, who represented the United States at the Olympics for the first time after a split with the Canadian federation, and Meyers Taylor, who sat a week in self-isolation after testing positive for coronavirus after arriving in Beijing , both took winding paths to the start line on Saturday.
But each blistered on the National Sliding Center track in the first monobob event, in which they pushed and steered their own sleds and finished first and second.
Now Meyers Taylor has one more task at the Games: she has been chosen as the United States flag bearer for Sunday’s closing ceremony.
