Jamie Greubel Poser, who won a bronze medal at the 2014 Sochi Games and was a two-time member of the U.S. Olympic women's bobsled team, retired Friday.
She announced her decision through USA Bobsled and Skeleton.
Greubel Poser started bobsledding 11 years ago, narrowly missed making the 2010 Olympic team as a push athlete. She enjoyed enormous success once she transitioned to the driver's seat. She won six World Cup races and was a 27-time medalist on that circuit, was the 2016-17 overall World Cup champion and won a bronze medal at the 2017 world championships.
"I have had the honor to compete for Team USA, go to two Olympic Games, and travel around the world with incredible athletes and teammates who have become lifelong friends," Greubel Poser said. "Now it feels like the right moment to begin the next chapter of my life."
That next chapter has already started. She's accepted a job teaching English at a school in Germany, the homeland of her husband — bobsledder Christian Poser, who has represented his country in the past two Olympics.
"It's amazing how much bobsled has shaped and changed my life," Greubel Poser said. "I never dreamed I would be married to another bobsledder and living in Germany."
Greubel Poser's retirement is the latest example of how the start of this Olympic quadrennial season will look very different for American sliding teams. The U.S. sent 30 bobsled, skeleton and luge athletes to the Pyeongchang Games in February. Of those, at least 15 have either officially retired or are choosing not to compete this season for a variety of reasons.
"Her absence on the team will be felt," USABS CEO Darrin Steele said. "And we'll miss her."
Greubel Poser teamed with Aja Evans to win bronze at Sochi. Evans has not said if she is also retiring, but she's unlikely to compete this season.
"There is no feeling in the world like standing on the Olympic podium with a medal around your neck and USA on your back," Greubel Poser said.
There were two other results that stood out in her mind. The first was winning a World Cup gold medal on her home and favorite track in Lake Placid, New York, in 2016. The other came last November at another World Cup stop in Park City, Utah, where she won gold in the women's race and her husband helped push a German four-man sled to victory that same night.
When she was on, she was often dominant.
Greubel Poser once medaled in 10 consecutive World Cup races, on 10 different tracks around Europe and North America. For much of the last Olympic cycle, it seemed as if just about every race came down to either Greubel Poser, her U.S. teammate Elana Meyers Taylor, or Canada's Kaillie Humphries.
Meyers Taylor and Humphries are still sliding. Greubel Poser, who turns 35 next month and was fifth at the Pyeongchang Olympics, decided this was the right time to walk away.
"This has been the experience of a lifetime," she said.
