Former softball shortstop and pitcher Elana Meyers Taylor captured a gold medal for Team USA in the women’s monobob competition at the Winter Olympics on Monday afternoon.

The medal marks Meyers Taylor’s first gold medal and sixth all time — accomplishments that have made her the most decorated women’s bobsledder in Olympic history. She has now medaled in all five of her Olympic appearances, beginning with bronze at the 2010 Winter Olympics and adding two-woman silver medals at the 2014 Winter Olympics and the 2018 Winter Olympics.

She went on to win a bronze medal in the two-woman bobsled in Beijing during the 2022 Olympics, and her first medal in monobob — a silver. 

Meyers Taylor, who GW Athletics inducted into the school’s Hall of Fame in 2014, was softball’s first ever recruit in 2003. By the time she graduated in 2007, Meyers Taylor was a two time Atlantic 10 All Conference First Teamer, also having claimed nearly every offensive record.

Meyers still holds the record for most career strikeouts with 130 and most career triples with 15. 

On Monday, Meyers Taylor went into the final heat .15 seconds behind Germany’s Laura Nolte — the eventual silver-medalist — but she made up the difference in her final run, winning in a combined time of  3:57.93 across all four runs. The time was just .04 seconds better than Nolte’s combined time of 3:57.93 — the closest finish in women’s Olympic bobsled history. 

Fellow Team USA competitor Kaillie Armbruster Phillips won the bronze medal with a time of 3:58.05. Both athletes tied for the fastest individual run time of the competition clocking in with a track record of 59.08.  

The monobob event — featuring a solo athlete piloting the sled around an icy track — kicked off the women’s bobsled competition in Cortina with the first two heats on Sunday and the final two heats on Monday. Meyers Taylor will continue her quest for another medal on Friday as the first two heats of the two-woman bobsled commence.