As driver of team USA’s No. 1 bobsled, you might expect 29-year-old Elana Meyers’ off-season training partner to be the woman sitting behind her, but her true partner isn’t a woman at all.
Nic Taylor is also trying to the make the U.S. team for Sochi as a push athlete. Together, the pair make quite a team.
“We eat breakfast every day and have almost designated roles over who gets what. I always get the water. She gets the silverware. I pull a chair out for her every time,” said Taylor.
Meyers and Taylor aren’t just partners during training, they’re a couple off the track as well.
During a summer training session at Chula Vista’s Olympic Training Center in San Diego, they were frequently seen holding hands on the way to physical therapy sessions, laughing over inside jokes and, on occasion, even dressing alike.
“Some of my girlier things, the pinks and purples, he doesn’t really have,” said Meyers.
“We only have a couple of those,” added Taylor with a chuckle.
Like any couple working together, it’s sometimes hard to separate training from their personal lives.
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Arguments, though few and far between, are most likely to break out during an intense practice. The benefits far outweigh the negatives, however, and they claim to get in as much “dating” in a few days as most couples do in a month.
“It makes it a little more real when you’re training with somebody who it’s just as important to you to accomplish your goal as it is to them and vice versa,” Meyers explained.
She won a 2010 bronze medal at the Vancouver Olympics and has Olympic rings tattooed on her ankle.
It’s the ring on her finger, however, which made for the most memorable medal ceremony of her career. Taylor surprised her last January with a proposal as she stood on the podium after a bobsled race.
But, while his fiancée is considered a favorite to make the USA Olympic team bound for Sochi in 2014, Taylor has a tougher climb.
“I’m still going to be right there and if I’m not racing, I’m going to have the biggest sign I can find and paint my face and go crazy cheering for her, because that’s almost as important as me making it,” he told NBC 7 San Diego.
They’re the bobsled couple that trains together, and stays together. The kind that doesn’t just come around every four years, but once in lifetime.
