Elana Meyers Quotes

It's important that the Olympics are motivating to young people and inspiring to all, and the only way to do that is to ensure clean performances, free of cheating.

- Elana Meyers

I converted from softball. We've got volleyball, we've got track and field. Athletes come from anywhere and then convert into bobsled.

- Elana Meyers

There is a stigma in our sport that men are the better drivers. People think that, because the men compete in two-man and four-man, they are more versatile and that the women aren't great drivers.

- Elana Meyers

I went to college, George Washington University, and played softball there. I also played professionally but with the real goal of being an Olympian and making the Olympic team.

- Elana Meyers

I grew up playing softball, and at the age of nine, I decided I was going to be an Olympian. I didn't really know what that meant at the time. I thought it might be in a warm summer sport like softball, but I played a variety of sports growing up - basketball, soccer and track. I really didn't care. I just wanted to be an Olympian.

- Elana Meyers

My mom has never cared if I did sports or not. Obviously, she's proud of me, and she loves the fact that I'm an Olympian and she's got these trinkets to hang around with the medals and whatnot. But if I wanted to do whatever, if I wanted to be a doctor or a lawyer or whatever, she was going to support me regardless.

- Elana Meyers

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.

- Elana Meyers

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.

- Elana Meyers

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.

- Elana Meyers

I'm a squat person: I love squats. I love back squats, things like that.

- Elana Meyers

Traditionally, the treatment for a concussion has been to stare at a wall and wait for your brain to heal itself. Don't watch TV, don't read a book, don't look at your phone, and definitely don't train. It's a torturous protocol for an athlete.

- Elana Meyers

It's hard to describe what it's like to live with a concussion. You want to enjoy things like you used to, but you can't. You wake up in the morning and wonder how you're going to feel that day: What will my reactions be like? Will I have a headache? Will I have to triple check to see if I unplugged the flat iron?

- Elana Meyers

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

- Elana Meyers

If you've seen 'Cool Runnings,' it looks pretty easy. You're just riding in a sled, right? Not exactly. Bobsled actually involves a series of complex movements that aren't like those in any other sport. You put your body into a really awkward position to push a 400-pound sled downhill on ice.

- Elana Meyers

There's times when I'll be out in the middle of the track, standing in the curve, and I'll just laugh. 'What the heck am I doing right now? I'm sliding down the hill at crazy speeds and standing in freezing cold weather.'

- Elana Meyers

We're a sport that was in obscurity for so long, we started to get used to that.

- Elana Meyers

We train six days a week, and each day includes some type of running or strength workout. It's all about getting functionally stronger in the positions that matter for racing, which means balancing the strength between my quads and hamstrings.

- Elana Meyers

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.

- Elana Meyers

I feel like sport can transcend a lot of different things.

- Elana Meyers

Sport can transcend bias.

- Elana Meyers

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.

- Elana Meyers

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

- Elana Meyers

Anytime you hit a curve, or you hit on the side of the wall, you hit against the side of the sled. We're taking four to five, sometimes six or seven Gs on our body every time we go down the track. And then the crashing.

- Elana Meyers

I was a shortstop in softball, and a lot of times I had collisions with base runners coming in, so I definitely have scars.

- Elana Meyers

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.

- Elana Meyers

Being southern and doing bobsled was difficult from the standpoint that I had no idea how to handle the cold and how to dress in the cold, let alone warm up and compete in the cold - so it was a definite shock. I didn't even own a coat when I first started bobsledding!

- Elana Meyers

I've been in plenty of crashes! Some are not too bad - resulting in ice burn. Others are pretty rough, and sometimes - rarely, but sometimes - people do get seriously injured. It's a risk we all know of and accept. If you bobsled, you're going to crash - guaranteed.

- Elana Meyers

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

- Elana Meyers

I played softball at George Washington University, and then I played professionally for the Mid-Michigan Ice. I had a couple of tryouts with the U.S. Olympic Team, but I don't know if I have a word to describe how bad one of the tryouts was. It was the worst tryout in the history of tryouts. It was that bad.

- Elana Meyers

I train with track athletes, which is weird for bobsledders. I love training with track athletes because they help me work on my speed, and they give me something to cheer for during the Summer Olympics.

- Elana Meyers

I've always been the type willing to try a lot of different things.

- Elana Meyers

I'm not sure I'll ever love softball as much as bobsled. It's like having children: you don't love one more than the other, you just love them differently, and that's how my love for softball is vs. my love of bobsled - two totally different sports with different personalities.

- Elana Meyers

The more eyeballs there are on the sport, it will get more diverse.

- Elana Meyers

Our sport is one of the few on the winter side that is so diverse. It shows we don't have to be limited by race or gender or whatever and how far we have come as a sport.

- Elana Meyers

I got a letter from a mom, and she was telling me about how her daughter is a tomboy and the trouble she has in classes and being around boys. She herself had the same kinds of problems growing up and how inspired they were by me. That was such an incredible email to receive.

- Elana Meyers

I don't put limits on anybody.

- Elana Meyers

I want to represent my color and ethnicity. To be proud of our heritages is really cool.

- Elana Meyers

My father's NFL dreams never really felt like motivation to me, but it was something to aspire to. He was such a great athlete, the least I could do is try and use my athletic talent to represent my country in a different way. He represented as a Marine. Maybe I could do something to represent as an athlete.

- Elana Meyers

Bobsled is a universal sport, and most people don't know that. Anybody can slide down a hill.

- Elana Meyers

Even though concussions affect women more often than men, there's not a lot of concussion research about women specifically. You can slip and fall and hit your head and have a concussion. And unless you know what to do, and unless you're able to take the right steps, you may not be able to recover.

- Elana Meyers

For me, it's always been about continually challenging myself and continually figuring out how to go down the hill faster.

- Elana Meyers

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?

- Elana Meyers

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

- Elana Meyers

In bobsled, you work as a team - a driver and a brakeman. Both athletes push, but the brakeman's biggest responsibility is to push as fast as she can and get in and ride down in a good aerodynamic position. The driver helps to push but gets in first and then steers the sled down the track. We aren't just along for the ride, despite how it looks!

- Elana Meyers

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

- Elana Meyers

A guy like Usain Bolt would be sick behind a bobsled.

- Elana Meyers

I trash talk all the time.

- Elana Meyers

I know how much my mom has impacted my journey and how much I wouldn't be where I am without my mom. As much as she says she's proud of me, I'm even more so proud of her because of what she's done and how she's been able to raise me and my sisters.

- Elana Meyers

Biggest rival is Kaillie Humphries of Canada, and we are actually training partners. She was at my wedding, and I consider her a close friend.

- Elana Meyers

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

- Elana Meyers

My favorite thing about South Korea is the people - they are so kind and helpful.

- Elana Meyers

I've been on every type of nutrition plan you can think of.

- Elana Meyers

I'm a representative of something that's greater than myself. I'm not just representing myself or my country: I'm representing Christ and what He's done through me.

- Elana Meyers

People win medals in all shapes and sizes! And I can't help but say that finding a fiance who loves me unconditionally at any size has played a huge role in my body confidence.

- Elana Meyers

I love my teammates. I love my coaches.

- Elana Meyers

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.

- Elana Meyers

Bobsled boils down to three things - your equipment, start, and drive. To win the Olympics requires all three.

- Elana Meyers

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.

- Elana Meyers

I think the hardest thing is that all of us would love to just stick to sports - but if you want us to be role models to kids, then you need to stand for more than just sports.

- Elana Meyers

My dad was a football player, and I've been the same size since eighth grade, so I get how it can be hard when you don't fit in with the 'normal-size' girls, or your butt and legs are too big for normal-size jeans.

- Elana Meyers

After the situation I had with my concussion in 2015, how long and lasting the effects were, I'm just more careful about it.

- Elana Meyers

Whether you think you can or you can't, you're right. Just shows you how powerful beliefs are and how you have the ability to change your situation and affect what happens to you. The mind is a powerful thing.

- Elana Meyers

After giving up softball, I didn't know what I was going to do. I thought I would try bobsled, but I wasn't really sure what would happen. I thought my athletic career was over.

- Elana Meyers

Growing up, most girls have this image of how they want their wedding to be and things like that. I had none of that except for the cake I wanted, and that's what I got. The cake was the first thing we ordered.

- Elana Meyers

I've encountered a lot of biases as a woman.

- Elana Meyers

All growing up, the outside world wants to tell you what you can and cannot do as a female - what sports are acceptable, what sports are appropriate, what is appropriate to study, what is appropriate to say. But luckily, I have a strong family, and my mom is the most amazing mom in the world. She never let me worry about biases.

- Elana Meyers

Most people watch a game because they're excited about it; I'll sit there and watch lacrosse championships to try to find a female who could be a bobsledder.

- Elana Meyers

I've got some genetic gifts.

- Elana Meyers

Regardless of what you look like, regardless of where you come from, you can be involved in winter sports.

- Elana Meyers

I'm not big on protein shakes - I think they're pretty gross, actually - so I have to make sure I eat enough meat, fish, and other good protein sources.

- Elana Meyers

The Lord calls us to love everybody.

- Elana Meyers

It's a challenge, but every single German or Canadian I want to beat, I still have to love them. That means competing the way God wants me to compete and helping my opponents if they have a need.

- Elana Meyers

My father was an NFL running back, so I feel like I might be more susceptible, genetically, to CTE.

- Elana Meyers

If one little girl who looks like me picks up a winter sport because she sees me, that's all anybody could ever ask for.

- Elana Meyers

Oh my gosh, cheat meals I could go on and on about.

- Elana Meyers

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

- Elana Meyers

I love this sport, and I want people to have the opportunities that I have. I want the kid in the inner city to know that she can be a bobsledder one day, and I want the kid in the middle of Africa to know that she can be a bobsledder one day. So the more that we can go out there and grow the sport, the better.

- Elana Meyers

I don't like cold weather.

- Elana Meyers

For most people, they only thing they know about bobsled is 'Cool Runnings.' Well, 'Cool Runnings' was, of course, four men in a bobsled, and four-man is considered the highlight of our sport. It's what everybody knows. It's what everybody watches. And it's the big dog of our sport.

- Elana Meyers

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

- Elana Meyers

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.

- Elana Meyers

Bobsleigh is best for athletes who are fast and strong, which were my strengths in softball.

- Elana Meyers

Bobsled is best for athletes who are fast and strong, which were my strengths in softball.

- Elana Meyers

I love driving the sled more than anything.

- Elana Meyers

People say a two-man sled is like driving a racecar, and a four-man is like driving a truck. And it feels that way.

- Elana Meyers

Having my dad play for the Falcons, what it did was really to expose me to a whole bunch of other elite-level athletes, which I think gives me an advantage and allowed me to understand what goes into sports. It is more than going out onto the field and going out onto the ice and competing.

- Elana Meyers

I'll do whatever I need to do to bring more athletes to the sport.

- Elana Meyers

Bobsledders are big athletes, and I'm a big athlete.

- Elana Meyers

I played all kinds of sports growing up: soccer, basketball, track. You name it, I've probably played it.

- Elana Meyers

Bobsledding is an expensive sport.

- Elana Meyers

I was always encouraged to participate in whatever sports I wanted to be in.

- Elana Meyers

Love can overcome everything.

- Elana Meyers

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

- Elana Meyers

I love this country. I love being a citizen. I believe we are the greatest country in the world.

- Elana Meyers

In Sochi, I felt like I lost a gold.

- Elana Meyers