(Photo credit: REUTERS/Athit Perawongmetha)

CORTINA D'AMPEZZO, Italy -- American Elana Meyers Taylor finally claimed an Olympic gold medal at the age of 41 on Monday when the mother of two snatched the monobob bobsleigh title by four hundredths of a second to put the icing on an incredible career.

Germany's Laura Nolte led going into the fourth and final run but lost ground on the tricky upper section and had to settle for silver ahead of American defending champion Kaillie Humphries.

Meyers Taylor had won three silver and two bronze medals in her previous four Olympic appearances and looked set for another minor medal until the final seconds of a nerve-shredding contest.

Nolte, a gold medalist in the Two-Woman in 2022, opened Monday's proceedings with a 59.15 track record and it seemed the battle for gold was already over.

The vastly experienced Americans, however, were not about to give up that easily. Meyers Taylor steered superbly to immediately set another track record of 59.08 seconds -- which Humphries, a youngster at 40 and also a mother, promptly matched.

That left double world champion Nolte only 0.15 ahead going into the final run.

Humphries, who had previously won two golds for Canada in the Two-Woman before switching allegiance, clocked 59.54, which proved enough for bronze, a long way clear of Germany's Lisa Buckwitz.

Meyers Taylor then put down a smooth, but not extraordinary 59.51, seemingly leaving the door open for Nolte. However, the 27-year-old German clipped the wall early and then suffered another skid to lose ground and could not make it up at the finish as she clocked 59.70 -- good enough only for silver.

Four years ago, in the first appearance at the Olympics of the only bobsleigh event where everyone uses the same, standard sled, Germany failed to make the podium, despite taking seven of the other nine bobsleigh medals available.

Since then Nolte has emerged as the No. 1, twice winning the world championship and topping the World Cup standings this year.

But on Monday the calm experience of Meyers Taylor, who made her Olympic debut 16 years ago, made the difference.

Last week she said that winning a gold medal 'would mean everything and would mean nothing... there's so much more to my life.'

It did not look quite like that as she wrapped herself in the American flag beaming like a teenager on Monday.

'I don't think I'm going to process this for a while,' she said at a press conference.

'There were so many moments in the last four years I thought it was impossible, but the team around me believed in me.

'I don't think I needed it, I wanted it and that's what allowed me to keep going. Now to have my name up there with Bonnie Blair (former U.S. speed skater whose tally of six Winter Olympic medals she matched) doesn't even make sense to me.

'At my first Games in 2010 Bonnie Blair was one of the athletes who welcomed us into the Olympic family, so to have that as my starting point and to now have my name in the same sentence as her is just crazy.'

Humphries was delighted with bronze and also keen to bang the drum for the older athlete.

'You get a lot of people that like to write you off as soon as you reach 40. 'It's all downhill from there' is what you hear,' she said. 'I think Elana and I are both proof that that's not true.

'For every girl out there that wants that dream of being a high-performance athlete, to stand on an Olympic podium and be a mom at the same time, it can happen.'

In contrast, Nolte could not hide her disappointment.

'After four runs, to finish in silver by four hundredths is very sad, because I was leading and was sure I could make it in the last run,' she said.

'I made one mistake at the top that was taking all my time away, my speed away, and I already knew it would be hard to remain in the lead.'

--Reuters, special to Field Level Media