track record

MY OLYMPICS JOURNEY: Elana Meyers rocks the mountains

I could not tell.

Speaking with Elana Meyers after her record-setting start to the 2014 women’s bobsled competition, I watched her display the same calmness and composure she has shown in the past.

She spoke of her performance as if it were a training run, not Day One of the Winter Olympics. She talked of how, while she was certainly excited to sit atop the leaderboard, she needed to focus on the overall picture and work on fixing the mistakes from her first two heats.

She seemed very level-headed.

And I could not tell if she was faking it.

Meyers had to have been doing mental backflips, right? Team USA’s top bobsled driver had to have been thrilled with coming out of the gate and setting a track record on her first run. She had to have been relieved, after crashing her sled twice in last week’s training runs, to have taken two clean, beautiful slides down the Sochi track.

More than that, she had to have been bubbling with excitement. After winning a bronze medal as a brakeman in 2010, Meyers learned how to drive the bobsled in half the time usually required. She entered this season as America’s best and remained so entering the Olympics.

After one night, she stood temporarily as the world’s top driver, two heats away from potentially realizing her gold medal dreams.

She had to have been absolutely amped, right?

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