Erin Jackson's Historic Speedskating Gold Is Just Part of Her Olympic Journey

Erin Jackson first put on ice skates in September 2016, at age 24. She began competitive speedskating in September 2017, and she qualified for the Pyeongchang Olympics in 500-meter long-track speedskating four months later, making her the first Black woman to make a U.S. Olympic team in that discipline. She finished 24th.

This past November, Jackson became the first Black American woman to win a World Cup race, setting two track records in ​​Tomaszow Mazowiecki, Poland, in the process. 

Now she's an Olympic gold medalist, the first Black woman to win an Olympic gold medal in speedskating and the first American woman to win one in an individual speedskating event since 2002.

Jackson won the 500-meter event Sunday in 37.04 seconds. Japan's Miho Takagi won the silver in 37.12, while Angelina Golikova of the Russian Olympic Committee won the bronze in 37.21. 

"Hopefully, this has an effect," Jackson said in her post-race interview. "Hopefully, we'll see more minorities, especially in the USA, getting out and trying these winter sports."

Going into the Olympic trials in January, Jackson was ranked No. 1 in the world. She had won half of her eight World Cup races in the 500-meter this season and medaled in two others. But she slipped and did not initially qualify for Beijing. Jackson faltered on the second straightaway and ended up in third place, one spot away from an Olympic berth.

"On the back stretch, I'm not really sure what happened," she said at the time. "I lost my footing a bit. Almost went down, saved it... just hit a bad edge."

Her teammate and friend Brittany Bowe, whom Jackson grew up inline skating with in Ocala, Florida, then relinquished her spot in the 500-meter event and gave it to Jackson. Bowe won the 500-meter after Jackson's slip at the Olympic trials. She and Kimi Goetz, who came in second, qualified for the Olympics in that event.

Bowe, a three-time Olympian who also qualified for the Olympics in the 1000-meter and 1500-meter events (her stronger ones), said "no one's more deserving" than Jackson for the spot.

"After that unfortunate slip, I knew in my mind before that night was even over that if it had to come down to a decision of mine, she could have my place," Bowe told NBC in January. "... It's bigger than just me. It's Team USA." 

Stacy Revere/Getty Images

"I'm beyond grateful and humbled and just...I'm happy," Jackson told NBC at the time about receiving the spot from Bowe. She characterized Bowe as a mentor as well as a friend. "... It's an amazing relationship." 

The U.S. later received a third qualifier, and Bowe was able to compete in the event Sunday as well. She came in 16th, in what commentator Joey Cheek said was a rust-buster before her longer events. Goetz was 18th. 

Jackson's story sounds like a fairy tale, if you omit the years of training she put in as a world champion inline skater.

She began inline skating at age nine, at a roller rink in Ocala, Florida. She started as an artistic roller-skater and switched to inline after coaches said she was too fast.

Bowe, who is four years older than Jackson, and Joey Mantia, also a three-time Olympian in long-track speedskating who is six years older than Jackson, trained there as well. Their coach was Renee Hildebrand.

Hildebrand herself cannot ice skate, she told Eric Adelson the Washington Post earlier this month, but she has sent many inline skaters whom she trained onto the ice. Bowe and Mantia moved to Salt Lake City to train long-track speedskating in 2010; they both made their first Olympic appearances in Sochi in 2014. 

Jackson stayed on terra firma, eventually winning 12 world championship medals and 47 national titles in the sport. She won silver in the 500-meter inline event at the 2015 Pan American Championships. She also played roller derby for six years beginning in 2012, twice advancing to the International Women's Flat Track Derby Championships.

Simultaneously, she pursued her education, graduating cum laude with a bachelor's degree in materials science and engineering from the University of Florida in 2015. She has since completed an associate's degree in computer science and begun another in exercise science and kinesiology. She has an eye on a master's in biomechanics.

All of this with an eye on helping create prosthetics for athletes, she told Forbes Sports' Michelle Bruton in March 2021. She called school her "hobby" in an interview with NBC Sports earlier this month. 

But Jackson wanted to go to the Olympics, and inline skating is not an Olympic sport. Jackson's coach, Ryan Shimabukuro, told Stephanie Apstein of Sports Illustrated that she told him she was "willing to start over again from square one." 

SEBASTIEN BOZON/Getty Images

Jackson told Bruton that the difference between inline skating and ice skating is the muscles it works: quads in the former, hips in the latter. 

In 2016, Jackson got on ice skates for the first time in the Netherlands. She moved to Salt Lake City to train in 2017. She quit once, returning to Florida, before committing to ice.

When she traveled to the Olympic trials in January 2018, she told no one, per Apstein, not even her family. When she qualified, she told her roller derby team that she couldn't travel to the Roller Derby World Cup that year, but not why: There was a conflict with her appearance in Pyeongchang. 

A new confidence in Jackson's skating was evident Sunday in Beijing. Cheek noted her "efficient" and "relaxed" work, particularly in her final turn in the outside lane. It was quite a change from that first shaky time she set foot on ice.

If Jackson has improved this much in four years, from 24th place in 2018 to a gold in Beijing, what is her limit? 

After Jackson finished, she embraced Shimabukuro. Then she hugged Bowe.

"She said she's really proud of me, and I said a lot of thank yous," Jackson said about Bowe in her post-race interview.

Then she skated a victory lap with the American flag. But let's not call it happily ever after.

Jackson's career on ice has just gotten started, after all.