Elana Meyers Taylor: ‘Some don’t want to see this happening. But it’s happening’

http://www.theguardian.com/sport/2014/dec/18/elana-meyers-taylor-bobsleigh-women

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“I’m pretty sure there are still some people who don’t want to see this happening,” Elana Meyers Taylor says. “But it’s happening.”

On Saturday, in fact, when Meyers Taylor and Kaillie Humphries are set to become the first women to compete in a four-man bobsleigh World Cup event, blazing a trail at up to 80mph on a twisting track in Calgary.

Humphries won Olympic gold for Canada in Sochi in the two-woman bobsleigh, with Meyers Taylor, an American, taking silver. Now the friends will race with and against men in Calgary in the second stop on the eight-round World Cup circuit.

The term “four-man” is yet to be updated for this new era, while Meyers Taylor feels some European attitudes are ripe for refreshment after she qualified to race in the World Cup with a 10th-place finish at an event in France earlier this month. “The way everyone was acting it was like they were shocked that a woman could drive a sled. Still internationally there’s some resistance,” she said.

Meyers Taylor and Humphries lobbied hard for this chance, which was granted in September when the International Bobsleigh and Skeleton Federation declared the four-man version of the sport gender-neutral. “We follow the spirit and movements of our time,” said the president, Ivo Ferriani.

Now bobsleigh is enjoying mainstream media attention with nary a Jamaican in sight. Humphries was already a star in Canada, where she was named the nation’s athlete of the year last week. Meyers Taylor can officially race with her husband and fellow bobsleigher Nic Taylor.

“I started thinking about this realistically two years ago. Before then I was just too young as a driver to really think about doing four-man. I started pushing within our federation, within our board of directors and they’ve been supportive the entire time,” she said.

For the 30-year-old it was a matter of opportunity as well as equality. Until now women could only take part in two-women contests, though the sport was mixed in its early days and a pioneer named Katherine Dewey competed against men and won the US national title in 1940. Combined teams were then banned, supposedly for safety reasons. Men’s bobsleigh first featured in the inaugural winter Olympics in 1924 but a women’s event was not added until 2002.

“I think the biggest thing is I just wanted another opportunity to compete. Men have had two disciplines forever, two opportunities to win an Olympic medal where we’ve just been relegated to one,” Myers Taylor said.

“In our sport, pretty much if you are off [the pace in] the first run of the Olympics it’s pretty hard to work your way back. So really it comes down to the first run, if you’re not there you’re out of a medal already. To have another opportunity to compete and to show what I’ve got against the best in the world, that’s really what I was after.”

Humphries, Meyers Taylor and their male team-mates won medals in North American Cup races in Calgary last month. Saturday’s schedule is demanding, though, with the four-man starting only about an hour after the second heat of the two-women contest, meaning four runs in quick succession. They will be up against the British pilot Lamin Deen’s team.

If Humphries and Meyers Taylor prove they can be competitive in the World Cup and perhaps next February’s world championships in Germany, it could clear the path for women to enter the four-man competition at the 2018 winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea; or at least, add a four-woman race.

On top of the most obvious mixed gender discipline, figure skating, 2014 saw the Olympic debuts of mixed relay biathlon and mixed team relay luge. But Meyers Taylor and Humphries would like to take part in gender-blind races where they are picked purely on ability, not because rules require mixed teams.

“We want opportunities to compete, we want opportunities to show what we’ve got. There’s always been this comparison in our sport, whether male drivers are better than female drivers, and now we have a one-on-one comparison,” Meyers Taylor said.

Feedback has been overwhelmingly supportive, she added. “I’ve had conversations with other athletes from Team USA – speed skaters, cyclists, a whole slew of athletes. Track and field have reached out to me and really congratulated me on what I’ve done so far and what they and I hope I will continue to do in the future. They’re really all behind it. I don’t know what impact it will have on a larger movement, whether other females will compete against men, but hopefully.”

Meyers Taylor and Humphries, 29, will pilot their crafts with three male team-mates behind.

“I’m confident in my driving skills,” the American said. “It does present some challenges … You have the opportunity to go with me or a male pusher or male driver that might be faster than me; a lot of times they’ll go to that male driver because he’s faster regardless of driving skill.

“Luckily, though, I’ve been genetically blessed that I am able to hang with some of the men. In our combined scores I’m just as fast as some of our male pilots, I can lift a lot, I’m strong, I’m fast and I’m confident that I can compete at this level.

“The position down the track is all technique, all driving skill, that’s where I hope to pick up most of the time. At the start the push is very important, it is the only accelerator in our sport, but at the same time you can make up time from a poor start.”

Meyers Taylor could yet join the select band of athletes to have competed at both a summer and winter Olympics. A couple of weeks after Sochi she flew to California to train with the US women’s rugby sevens squad. She said that schedule clashes with bobsleigh are problematic, but did not rule out a bid to make the team when sevens debuts at the 2016 Games in Rio. For now, though, she is focused on producing performances that will thaw any lingering prejudices.