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
Find your passion, set a goal, go to work, evaluate, reassess, and repeat.
Regardless of what you look like, regardless of where you come from, you can be involved in winter sports.
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.
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.
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.
After the situation I had with my concussion in 2015, how long and lasting the effects were, I'm just more careful about it.
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.
I'm a squat person: I love squats. I love back squats, things like that.
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.'
I love driving the sled more than anything.
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.
I'll do whatever I need to do to bring more athletes to the sport.
The things I've had to overcome have been crazy.
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.
The Lord calls us to love everybody.
I converted from softball. We've got volleyball, we've got track and field. Athletes come from anywhere and then convert into bobsled.
I feel like sport can transcend a lot of different things.
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?
I don't like cold weather.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I made driving mistakes in Sochi that cost me gold, and I'll torture myself for the rest of my life about that!
Bobsledding is an expensive sport.
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.
In Sochi, I felt like I lost a gold.
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.
Bobsled is best for athletes who are fast and strong, which were my strengths in softball.
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.
Oh my gosh, cheat meals I could go on and on about.
A guy like Usain Bolt would be sick behind a bobsled.
Making the transition from softball to bobsleigh was difficult, but my family and friends believed in me when no one else would.
Sport can transcend bias.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
Being a brakeman is very physical, and success is mostly determined by how fast you can push a sled for about 30 meters.
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.
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!
My father was an NFL running back, so I feel like I might be more susceptible, genetically, to CTE.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
