Elana Meyers

Bobsled is a universal sport, and most people don't know that. Anybody can slide down a hill.

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.'

After giving up softball, I didn't know what I was going to do. I thought I would try bobsled, but I wasn't really sure what would happen. I thought my athletic career was over.

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

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!

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

Bobsled boils down to three things - your equipment, start, and drive. To win the Olympics requires all three.

When bobsled is going right - and it sometimes goes wrong - it's the closest thing I could imagine to being a superhero.

I'm E Money because I'm money when it counts. Not sure exactly where or when it started, but I was called it in softball, too.

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

Bobsledding is like sprinting with NASCAR. You get to push these 400-pound sleds as fast as you can down a hill and hop in. How could you not enjoy that?

In Sochi, I felt like I lost a gold.

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.

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.

It's important that the Olympics are motivating to young people and inspiring to all, and the only way to do that is to ensure clean performances, free of cheating.

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.

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.

I've been on every type of nutrition plan you can think of.

I'm a squat person: I love squats. I love back squats, things like that.