Elana Meyers

“When bobsled is going right - and it sometimes goes wrong - it's the closest thing I could imagine to being a superhero.”

“I grew up in Douglasville, Georgia. My father played football for the Atlanta Falcons. We lived a bunch of places when I was younger. I was born in California. We lived in Chicago for a little bit, and finally, we ended up in Georgia.”

“Being a minority athlete in this sport, it's been wrought with challenges, but I wouldn't consider myself a trail blazer.”

“I'm E Money because I'm money when it counts. Not sure exactly where or when it started, but I was called it in softball, too.”

“I love who I am. But being a woman competing in a male-dominated sport and always trying to push the envelope as a female athlete, you get a lot of comparisons to men and things like that.”

“I really, really wanted to be an Olympian. My parents knew about this dream of mine, and they suggested I try my hand at bobsled. They'd seen it on TV at the Salt Lake City Games in 2002 and thought it would be a good sport for me.”

“You get this feeling in bobsled, like a combination of excitement, anxiety, and pure nervousness, and you get that combination only very few times.”

“Bobsledding is like sprinting with NASCAR. You get to push these 400-pound sleds as fast as you can down a hill and hop in. How could you not enjoy that?”

“My dad was a Marine, my aunt is still in the Navy, and my grandfathers both served. So, it's a huge honor for me to represent my country in any way I can.”

“Being a brakeman is very physical, and success is mostly determined by how fast you can push a sled for about 30 meters.”

“The things I've had to overcome have been crazy.”

“All sports have a zone, but ours is at 95 mph. You can feel the speed; you can feel the wind. It's the most euphoric thing I've ever done.”

“Find your passion, set a goal, go to work, evaluate, reassess, and repeat.”

“The biggest thing for me is keeping my hair moisturized. My go-tos are the Pantene Gold Series Hydrating Butter Cream and Intense Hydrating Oil.”

“The Midland community is huge into softball. They have a lot of competitive men's teams. We played at a beautiful stadium, and our games would be packed every weekend. I'm pretty sure people have my signature on softballs and they don't even know. Because we would just sign so many autographs all of the time.”

“The Lord calls us to love everybody.”

“If I'm honest, the thing I remember the most was the team mascot, Freddie the Falcon. I really remember there was a McDonald's nearby, and I remember eating a cheeseburger in the playground when the Falcon appeared. I'm not sure my dad appreciates that being my favorite memory of him playing.”

“I made driving mistakes in Sochi that cost me gold, and I'll torture myself for the rest of my life about that!”

“I am powered by the defeat in Sochi, as I am by all my defeats.”

“Making the transition from softball to bobsleigh was difficult, but my family and friends believed in me when no one else would.”