With her gold medal win on Monday, Elana Meyers Taylor became the most decorated U.S. female bobsledder, winning 6 total medals.

Wisconsin Badger forward Laila Edwards, has scored two goals for Team USA in the Olympics so far.

Growing up in the 1950s and ’60s, my first memory of the Winter Olympics was seeing mostly white athletes in unfamiliar sports, rarely discussed in Black communities like mine. Without access to skis, skates or even sleds, we had little interest in winter sports.

My passion for the Winter Olympics grew through my work in sports broadcasting, where I enjoyed events like bobsledding, skiing, ice hockey and speed skating, and gradually developed an interest in curling.

Covering the Winter Games was part of my job, but at the time, few Black athletes competed there. Instead, Black communities followed the Summer Olympics, inspired by heroes like Jesse Owens, whose 1936 victories in Berlin shattered myths of Aryan supremacy. Learning about Owens made me wonder: “Why are there no Blacks in the Winter Olympics?”

Today, the answer to that question is evident. Several American Black athletes now display their talents on the world stage at the Olympics. Leading the way is Erin Jackson, the 33-year-old speed skating sensation from Ocala, Florida, who is competing in her third Winter Olympic Games. Jackson holds the distinction of being the first Black American woman to win an individual Winter Olympic gold medal, in the 500-meter speed skating event in Beijing, China, in 2022. The speed skater made history again this year when she became the first Black woman to bear the U.S. flag at an Opening Ceremony.

During these Games in Milan-Cortina, Italy, she attempted to defend her title, finishing fifth behind 25-year-old Femke Kok of the Netherlands. Kok set a new Olympic Games record with a time of 36.49 seconds, finishing 66/100ths of a second ahead of Jackson, marking the largest margin of victory in this event since the 1972 Olympics.

For Jackson, being bested by Kok — eight years her junior, the reigning three-time World Champion and current world record holder (36.09 seconds on Nov. 16, 2025) in the 500-meter speed skating event — is no shame. Afterward, the American spoke about her loss: “In the back stretch, my feet got away from me a little bit,” Jackson said. “I had a little stumble going into the second corner, and then I just finished as strong as I could.”

One of the most notable African American athletes include Elana Meyers Taylor, competing in her fifth Winter Olympic Games and currently the most decorated Black athlete in Winter Olympics history. Across four Olympic appearances, she has secured sixmedals, including three silver and two bronze. She won a gold medal this year in the monobob event. What makes her story so captivating is her transition into the sport.

After falling short of her dream to play Olympic softball, Meyers Taylor didn’t retreat; she redirected her power into the bobsled push track. Within years, she was not just competing — she was dominating. She was instrumental in breaking the “ice ceiling” by becoming one of the first women to pilot a four-member bobsled in mixed-gender competition.

Furthermore, her advocacy for mothers in sports — balancing elite training with the demands of parenthood — has reshaped how governing bodies support female athletes. Meyers Taylor didn’t just win medals; she built a faster, more inclusive track for everyone following in her wake.

Azaria Hill, a bobsled brakeman on the USA two-woman team, is the daughter of Olympic sprint medalist Denean Howard-Hill and Olympic boxer Virgil Hill Sr. Her aunt, Sherri Howard, won a gold medal in Los Angeles and a silver medal in Seoul. She, like Meyers Taylor, transitioned to bobsledding from another sport following a successful career as a track and field sprinter at Long Beach State and the University of Nevada-Las Vegas.

This athletic pivot proved seamless; within a short period, she established herself as a top-tier push athlete, securing a fourth-place finish at the 2024 IBSF World Championships. The 2026 brakeman said, “I’ve dreamed of being an Olympian since I could understand the meaning of the Olympics, since I knew my parents and my aunt were Olympians.”

Hill met her bobsled teammate and pilot Kaysha Love at UNLV, where both were on the Runnin’ Rebels relay track team. Love, originally from West Jordan, Utah, was the 2016 Gatorade State Girls Track and Field Athlete of the Year. Upon arrival at UNLV, she became a Second Team All-American as a sprinter. They have worked well together and have a pre-race ritual that they execute before every slide. It’s called the “Team Love snap,” which ends with the athletes striking a model-like pose.

“Kaysha has her signature snap,” Hill said. “So, before we slide, we do our little handshake and then the snap. So, sometimes we’ll see on the sides that people are doing the snap with us.”

USA Bobsled-Skeleton (USABS) has encouraged track athletes to try bobsledding to extend their careers.

And listening to Hill, there are a lot of opportunities to excel.

“Bobsled can be a new sport for Black athletes,” Hill said. “We have a few on our team already on both the men’s and women’s side, and even on other teams, too. It’s just nice to see that diversity.”

Following in their footsteps is Bryan Sosoo, a Ghanaian American, who also transitioned from running to join the U.S. men’s bobsled team. He’ll be one of six “push” athletes who made the trip along with two drivers. Sosoo was a three-time Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference (MAAC) indoor champion in the 60-meter dash, posting a Monmouth school record of 6.71 seconds in 2016. The Maryland native is the Hawks’ first winter Olympian and first male Olympian.

Former college heptathlete and skeleton world champion Mystique Ro is known for her prowess in skeleton. The skeleton is a thin sled that competitors head down a frozen track face-first. Unlike the luge (where athletes sit on a larger sled) or bobsleigh (where they sit inside a cabin), a skeleton sled is essentially a thin, heavy metal plate with two runners. It has no steering mechanism or brakes. Athletes steer by using subtle shifts in body weight and dragging their toes on the ice.

Ro has earned three medals in this event, claiming gold and silver at the World Championships and gold at the Pan American Championships. She said in earlier interviews: “I heard of bobsled from the famous ‘Cool Runnings’ and I had watched Vancouver 2010,” so she thought, “Let’s see what happens.”

However, when coaches explained that bobsled racing might be a stretch given her small frame, she moved onto the skeleton with trepidation.

“I was kind of hesitant because skeleton is a crazy sport. You kind of have to trick yourself into saying, ‘It’s a game. It’s more fun as you get better because you’re not hitting stuff!’ So over time, I realized it is actually fun. And I found I had an aptitude for the start, which is very advantageous, so I’ve been doing it ever since.”

Darryl Payne Jr. is the first African American man to represent the United States in the Olympic skeleton event. The Temple, Texas, native has recently talked about gaining a spot on the skeleton team: “Achieving that would not only fulfill my dream but allow me to serve as a role model for younger minority generations who may not see themselves in this sport — or even know it exists,” he said. “Becoming a pioneer and a source of inspiration for my community would be one of the greatest honors of all.”

The name of Laila Edwards will be front and center in communities of color if the United States wins the gold medal in Olympic Women’s Hockey. Edwards, a defender from Cleveland Heights, Ohio, is the first Black woman to play for the U.S. Olympic Women’s Ice Hockey team.

With the U.S. Women’s team showing impressive early wins over Czechia (5-1), Finland (5-0), Switzerland (5-0), Canada (5-0) and Italy (6-0) in 2026, Edwards has the chance to place her name in United States Olympic Ice Hockey history alongside the members of the 1960 and 1980 (“Miracle on Ice”) gold medal-winning teams — an achievement of epic proportions.

Whether she or any Black athletes from the 2026 U.S. Olympic contingent win medals, their stories are already etched in gold. They have set the stage for the next generation of young Black Americans to pursue their dreams of glory in international Winter Olympic competition.

From Jesse Owens, who made history in the Summer Olympics at a time when there were no Black competitors in the Winter Games, to bobsledder Vonetta Flowers, the first African American and the first Black athlete from any country to win a gold medal at a Winter Olympics, today’s Black American winter athletes can see that much has changed. History has progressed as each current Black American Winter Olympian writes their name in the record books.