SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 13 , 2022. THE WASHINGTON POST EZ M2 D11split time talking about family
and sport. But her interactions
with her son have been brief.
They can FaceTime, but Nico’s
attention span makes that less
than ideal. On Friday, they got to
see each other in person — but
just for a few minutes.
“He’s just holding on to me,
and he doesn’t want to let go,”
Meyers Taylor said. “And then
even when I’m trying to leave, he’s
crying. It’s just... it’s pretty
difficult.”
What she needs now: sleep.
Somehow, isolation doesn’t lead
to rest.
“You’d think: ‘Oh, you’re not
sleeping with a baby. That would
be more restful,’ ” she said. “But I
think that’s the hardest part, is
not having him next to me at
night.”
By Monday night, there will be
a sheet with an order of finish in
the women’s monobob
competition at the Beijing
Olympics. By Feb. 19, there will be
the same for the two-woman race.
Both will include Elana Meyers
Taylor’s name, maybe with
medals, maybe not. But that order
of finish — gold, silver, bronze,
others — will tell nothing of what
she endured here. These are the
latest Covid Olympics. From the
outside, that might not be
apparent. A 37-year-old mother
and wife and medalist knows it
from the inside.She is also top-ranked driver in
the two-woman sled, and that
competition is later in the week.
Before the Games, two medals
weren’t an outlandish
expectation. Now — even as she’s
asymptomatic, even as she is out
of the close-contact protocols —
who knows? After the first two
monobob heats Sunday morning,
she sat in fourth place, with two
heats left Monday. In her darkest
moments over the past two
weeks, she had to be candid with
officials from the USA Bobsled
and Skeleton Federation: She
needed help.
“As an athlete, you want to be
like: ‘Oh, I’m the biggest and
baddest. I’ve got everything
under control,’ ” she said. “But I
think I really had to be open and
honest and tell them what I was
going through, tell them how
hard I was struggling.”
The federation, she said,
helped her come up with a daily
schedule. They worked on getting
her proper meals. They helped
her stay in shape. They have
pushed to determine how much
family time she can have without
violating the protocols. “They’ve
really been pulling their weight,”
she said.
What they can’t help Meyers
Taylor with: Being separated
from Nico. She sees Nic at the
track, because as an alternate he’s
allowed to be there, and they canb eijing OlyMPicsO
ne of the newest Olympic
sports is easily the most
fun to say out loud, so a
big thank-you to the
monobob’s creators for not going
with “one-person bobsled.”
But the event is unique in even
more beguiling ways than its
name. Compared with two- and
especially four-person sleds, the
pilots are busier, the ride is boun-
cier and, perhaps most intriguing
of all, the team’s wealth — or lack
of it — makes little difference.
Also, one woman does the jobs
of four men.Go-karts, Ferraris and semis
A monobob with the driver in-
side can weigh 546 pounds at
most, which is less than a third the
weight of a fully loaded four-man
sled. The lighter weight and the
weight’s position in the center
rather than over the axles makes a
monobob more prone to sliding
and fishtailing — “skittery,” as
drivers describe it.
Former U.S. bobsledder John
Napier, who piloted two- and four-
man sleds in the 2010 Olympics
and now trains kids in monobobs
at Lake Placid, said it is easier to
get down a track in a monobob
because it is nimbler and the driv-
er has more control, but it is also
more difficult to find — and main-
tain — the perfect line.
“Driving a monobob is like driv-
ing a go-kart,” he said. “A two-per-
son bob, that’s like driving a sports
car — a Ferrari or something....
Then you take a four-man bob,
and that’s like driving an 18-
wheeler.”
The four-man is significantly
faster — 95 mph or more, com-
pared with a top speed of around
75 mph for a monobob — and can
be unwieldy. It is three feet longer
but less roomy, so all four large
men have to sit mostly upright,
their torsos and noggins involun-
tarily bobbing in the turns. “It
gives you just this high rotational
mass; it makes you top-heavy, es-
sentially,” Napier said.
“In a four-man, you could say
that on any given day, something
could go wrong and you could end
up on your head. Whereas in
monobob, I’m saying to myself,
‘Yeah, I’m pretty darn sure I’m
going to make it down.’ Whether
I’m going to make it down clean
without bumping around and
skidding the walls? Well, I don’t
know about that.... But that’s
okay. I don’t mind bumping a wall
as long as I’m not on my head.”A level playing field
Okay, the actual playing field is
not level — it is a steep, mile-long
chute of ice. But monobob’s meta-
phorical playing field is radically
different and more egalitarian
than that of its parent sport.
Bobsled is notorious for its se-
cretive technological arms race,
and in fact, big-spending Formula
One powers such as McLaren and
Ferrari have forayed into bobsled
design. Top bobsled countries
pour buckets of money into the
research and development of cut-
ting-edge sleds. The U.S. sleds in
Beijing were made by BMW
Designworks USA and cost
$250,000 each. Meanwhile, coun-
tries hoping to enter the sport
often start with used, outdated
sleds and are behind before they
get to the track.
But a high-quality monobob
can be had for about $15,000, and
all monobobs you’ll see at Beijing
are the same make and model,
made for the Olympics by Munich-based iXent Sports.
It’s the difference between com-
missioning a custom-made de-
signer gown and grabbing a little
black sheath off the rack. When
everyone has the same dress... er,
sled, the only question left is,
“Who drove it better?”
The answer is not always the
big-money superpowers. Al-
though the favorites to win med-
als M onday are from long-stand-
ing bobsled countries and include
U.S. sledders Elana Meyers Taylor
and Kaillie Humphries, monobob-
bers from Nigeria, Jamaica, South
Korea and Ukraine have won or
placed high in World Cup races
this season.
“There’s a lot of nations that
cannot afford the top equipment,”
said Jamaica’s Jazmine Fenlator-
Victorian after a Thursday train-
ing run at the Yanqing track. “So
instead of outfitting a whole team
of women, you can really just start
with one person, one coach, may-
be a mechanic or physio, and you
can get by on a much more doable
budget.”
The standardization doesn’t
mean every monobob will be iden-
tical under its paint. IXent repre-
sentative Tim Jäger said that al-
though the carbon-fiber hull and
steel-and-aluminum chassis are
all the same, drivers can change a
few things, such as swapping
springs to make the steering tight-
er or looser and moving the seat
and footrests.
And the all-important runners
— the parts that touch the ice —
are distributed by the sport’s in-
ternational federation, but drivers
can sand, shape and polish them
within certain parameters, the
slicker the better.A really short history
Monobob racing sprung from
the same cradle as the bobsled
itself, which, like certain other
Olympic sports, originated with
rich people looking for something
to do on vacation. The first “bob-
sleigh” club was founded in
St. Moritz, Switzerland, in 1897,
home of the only natural track
that hosts World Cup races.
One-person bobsleds date at
least to the 1970s but were mostly
considered novelty contraptions
until around 2005, when they
caught on with a few folks in the
bobsled and toboggan crowd at
St. Moritz. In 2008, some of them
formed the world’s first monobob
club.
In 2016, monobob was contest-
ed by boys and girls at the Youth
Olympic Games in Lillehammer,
and in 2018, the Women’s Mono-
bob World Series appeared on the
World Cup circuit.
“In a very short time, if you
think — that’s about 15, 16 years —
something which came out of no-
where became Olympic,” said
Marc Fischer, a wine merchant
and current president of that orig-
inal club.
Fischer emphasized that nei-
ther he nor any of his fellow mem-
bers — numbering “between 50
and 100, depending on the year
and who pays” — will be compet-
ing in this or any other Olympics,
and the newfound hubbub around
the sport doesn’t really affect him.
“I mean, it’s kind of cool, but
you know, it doesn’t make a differ-
ence for us,” he said. “We are just
having fun.”Additional sources: International
Bobsled and Skeleton Federation and
USA Bobsled/Skeleton. Monobob
reference images from iXent Sports.BY BONNIE BERKOWITZ AND SIMON DUCROQUETMonobob asks one womanto do it all — at 75 mphThe event was added to increase women’s
participation, and one athlete does it all.
In previous Olympics, women competed
only in the two-person event.12’6’’
Women’s monobob
PUSHING
The first 150 feet require an all-out sprint and
take about six seconds. All sledders push, but it
is the main role of everyone but the pilot.
One-tenth of a second gained here can grow
into three-tenths by the finish.DRIVING
The pilot’s job is to choose the fastest path to
the bottom: not so high on walls that the sled
needs to travel farther but not so low that it
loses too much centrifugal force in curves.BRAKING
The brakeman pushes with the only handles
that don’t fold in. He stops the sled by pulling a
lever that jams a sharp metal rake into the ice.
Brakemen never pull the brake until the end.Four-man bobsled
Pilot
Pusher Pusher
Pilot
Brakeman
The three men behind
are chosen for their
explosive strength and
speed.The pilot steers by pulling D-ring handles that
move the sled’s front runners.Brake lever Brake leverBrakewomanBrakemanPilotOnly men compete in this event, and each has a
defined role. Men and women compete in the
two-person; one drives, and one brakes.Seasoned riders know how to anticipate turns
and manipulate their bodies in ways that have
the least effect on the sled’s balance.9’ 1’’PusherTHE WASHINGTON POSTUSA into the iconic Bird’s Nest
stadium for the Opening
Ceremonies. Instead, she was in
isolation: alone in one room, with
Nic in the next and her dad and
Nico a door farther down.
Saturday was, she said, the first
day she hadn’t cried. In fairness,
it was still early in the day.
“I’m not a crier,” she said.
“There’s been a lot of emotions
every day. It’s just been really,
really hard.”
The idea and the ideal at any
Olympics is to have the mind
clear and the body sound. Meyers
Taylor’s brain is inevitably
addled, though Saturday brought
hope. “I feel like my head’s finally
starting to clear,” she said. “It’s
been pretty foggy and bogged
down with stress.” Her body is
beat up from her sport, and given
isolation, it’s worse because she
hasn’t had regular access to
physical therapy.
She has worked out in what
amounts to a 10-meter space in
her room. She has a barbell and
eventually landed a stationary
bike. That’s an excellent setup forparts of the world, but these are
still, undeniably, the second
straight Covid Olympics. Anyone
in China with any affiliation with
the Games realizes this. The
bubble is real, and the bubble can
be suffocating. Life is this: hotel,
throat swab, bus, venue, bus,
hotel. The Olympics as a cultural
exchange is a notion from
yesteryear and the future. Maybe
someday. Not now.
Meyers Taylor is Team USA’s
reminder of all that. These are her
fourth Olympics, and she is
seeking her fourth medal — her
first gold. But on Jan. 29, two days
after arriving in China, she tested
positive for the coronavirus. So
did her husband, Nic Taylor, an
alternate on the American men’s
bobsled team. So did her son,
Nico, nearly 2. So did her father,
Eddie Meyers, who was permitted
to make the trip to help with
Nico.
The Olympics opened. Meyers
Taylor was supposed to carry the
American flag and lead TeamSVRLUGA FROM D1BARRY SVRLUGAFor Meyers Taylor, timeaway from son takes tollhouse so they could have an
overnight together.
“And I stayed as late as I could,”
she said, “and got there as soon as
I could in the morning.”
So Nico, who turns 2 t his
month, is part of Meyers Taylor’s
medal pursuit. He has traveled
the world with his parents as both
chased the Olympics. Meyers
Taylor is the top-ranked athlete in
monobob, a one-person-per-sled
event that’s new to the Games
and will kick off the bobsled
competition with two runs
Sunday and the final two Monday.a salesman attending a
convention. It is something less
than perfect for an elite athlete
with the pursuit of Olympic
medals just days away.
But Meyers Taylor’s situation is
further complicated — and pulls
more at the heart — because her
positive test stripped her of Nico.
The Taylors’ son was born
prematurely and has been
diagnosed with Down syndrome.
Meyers Taylor said the longest
she had ever been away from him
was nine hours — when she and
Nic dropped him at her parents’JOE KLAMAR/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES
Coronavirus issues have kept t hree-time Olympic bobsled medalist
Elana Meyers Taylor a part from son Nico, who turns 2 this month.