Source: Team USA
Parents have all sorts of hopes and dreams for their children: they want them to be doctors or singers, hope they are happy and healthy, or perhaps wish that they’ll have kids of their own one day. Very few parents would hope their child never becomes an Olympian, but Elana Meyers Taylor’s parents were two such dreamers. Elana’s dad was a professional football player, and he understood how much sport can take from you, and how hard the meager rewards can be to come by. In her childhood, Elana’s parents did all they could to steer her in any direction away from sports, but Elana was a magnet drawn to her true north, and she wouldn’t be denied.
She started playing softball when she was 9 years old, and announced to anyone who listened that she was going to be in the Olympics one day. Softball was her everything. She started playing travel ball, and in the blink of an eye it turned into a scholarship to attend George Washington. When the time came for her Team USA tryout, Elana felt the weight of all of her dreams crush down on her shoulders. She wanted it too much. She had dreamed too hard. Elana choked during the tryout, falling well short of her potential and failing to make the team.
A few years later, Elana’s parents (now of course supportive of her chosen career path), saw bobsledding on their TV in Georgia, and suggested she give it a go. When the time came for the open USA bobsled tryouts, she felt none of the nerves that had suffocated her during her softball audition. She felt all the freedom of being a novice, with no expectations of previous performance to weigh her down. She never looked back after those initial runs, and is now the Winter Olympics’ most decorated black athlete. Ever. There are countless articles, podcasts and TV segments that describe Elana’s success, shine a spotlight on her accomplishments and celebrate the history she’s made. She’s a 9 time World Championships medallist and a 5 time Olympic Games medallist, along with countless other record breaking performances.
Source: Elana Meyers Taylor
But when you ask Elana what she wants to talk about, her accomplishments are never at the top of the list.
After the 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Games, Elana and her husband Nic decided they were ready to grow their family. It took a little longer than they were expecting, but about a year later, Elana was pregnant. At the time, there was no maternity leave policy within the US Olympic and Paralympic Committee, so Elana and Nic held their news incredibly close. Elana was trying to put off the loss of her health care and housing as long as possible. But, when she was about 3 months pregnant, sitting in an Athlete’s Council meeting, the news broke: the USOPC was introducing its first maternity leave policy.
Elana laughed as she recounted that everything happens for a reason: if she had gotten pregnant when she and Nic had first tried, she wouldn’t have been covered under the new policy, and would have lost not only her job, but her health care while pregnant.
Source: Elana Meyers Taylor
This is a topic that Elana feels incredibly strongly about. The uncertainty and fear that surrounded the early stages of her pregnancy, and the relative lack of support that still exists for athletes who are parents has affected her and her teammates, as well as countless other athletes in the United States and beyond. She wants to advocate for family planning resources and options not only for female athletes, but for all athletes who decide to have children. A Pew Research study showed that millennial fathers spend 3 times the amount of hours with their children compared with the previous two generations. Elana believes that all parents who are athletes deserve to spend time with their children, something that’s not possible for many families with limited childcare options on the road, and unpredictable income to help support those childcare needs.
Elana’s first son, Nico, was born in early March of 2020. He needed to stay in the NICU for 10 days after his birth, a stint that would have cost Elana and her husband $85,000 without Elana’s USOPC insurance. Nico was born deaf and with Down Syndrome, both diagnoses requiring specialists and further care. Navigating postpartum, new parenthood and a disability diagnosis in the pandemic was far from easy, but Elana said she was never intimidated by parenting a child with a disability. She had lived at the US Olympic and Paralympic Training Center before Nico’s birth and had had the opportunity to spend quality time with many Paralympic athletes. These experiences showed her that individuals living with disabilities bring new and valuable perspectives to any group, and live full and joyful lives. Elana’s second son Noah was born in 2023 and is also deaf, making ASL the common language of the Taylor family.
Source: Elana Meyers Taylor
Often Elana interacts with people who either don’t know what to say to her about having children with disabilities, or what they do have to say boils down to nothing more than pity. I asked her what she wishes people knew about parenting Noah and Nico, and guiding them down their own unique paths.
“I know it’s weird to hear an Olympian say this,” she shared, “But I want everyone to know that they’re not defined by what they are able to accomplish.”
To me it’s not weird at all. If there’s anyone who knows what it’s like to have their personality whittled down to their accomplishments, its Olympic athletes. She wants everyone to know that her boys are worthy, just as they are. She knows that her sons may enter the traditional workforce one day, and they may not. Their relationships and accomplishments will undoubtedly look different from others’, and Elana wouldn’t have it any other way. They might win a gold medal one day, but that won’t be what’s important. Her voice brightened as she shared how welcomed she has felt in the deaf community, where there are countless deaf adults who love and care for Nico and Noah as though they were their own. Each of her boys’ disabilities has opened her and her family to new worlds.
Elana now travels with her two sons to all of her competitions, balancing her presence at training and competition with being present for her boys. I had to ask her the classic question: how the heck does she do it? Almost all of her competitions require international travel to a cold and remote location, where she needs to be surgically precise with her sporting performance. She also needs to parent two quickly growing children, and anticipate any and all of their needs.
Elana says that she does her best to be present to whatever she is doing at the time. It has been proven that we are actually incapable of multitasking, so Elana says don’t bother trying. When she’s with her boys she does her best to focus entirely on them, and when she’s on the run, her mind is only there.
Source: Elana Meyers Taylor
She still has her eyes set on the elusive Olympic Gold, and plans to keep striving for that goal for as long as she is competitive on the world stage. But, if there’s anything Nico and Noah have taught her, it’s that that gold medal won’t change anything about what really matters.
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