Quotes from 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.

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

Bobsledding is an expensive sport.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

I've got some genetic gifts.

In Sochi, I felt like I lost a gold.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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