In the moments before she joined the 2018 US Olympic speed skating team, Erin Jackson wondered if she could climb onto the ice without falling. She was on the way to transitioning from figure skating and after only four months in skateboarding, she still finds some of the best points in the sport challenging.
“I was a mess,” she says with a laugh. “I needed someone to lift me up.”
Jackson shocked everyone – especially herself – with her performance during the playoffs. She secured a place on the team and viewed her trip to Pyeongchang, where she finished 24th out of 31 in the 500m, as a learning opportunity. Jackson, 29, is not looking forward to continuing her gaming education; She is looking forward to winning. In 2021, she finished first in four of this year’s 500 World Cup races – becoming the first black woman to reach the podium – and took two more medals. He is now the United States’ best hope for a medal in the sport.
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Jackson almost missed Beijing when he slipped in the 500m during the Olympic trials in early January, leaving them out of qualifying. But Brittany Beau, one of Jackson’s closest friends and a medal contender in the 1000 meters and 1500 meters, gave up her place in the 500. Lee made Erin skate in the Olympics.” “Nobody deserves it anymore.”
Jackson’s first memories of herself were as a little girl riding around in tiny plastic sleds. Growing up in Ocala, Florida, she quickly became a “carousel mouse,” she says, “someone who goes to open sessions, hangs out with his friends, and skates to music.” When she was eight, she tried figure skating—especially snowboarding—until her coaches started complaining that she was going too fast. So I switched to figure skating and started collecting national titles while competing in the derby as well. But the inconvenient truth bothered her: figure skating is not an Olympic sport.
So, on a trip to the Netherlands in 2016, Jackson reluctantly climbed onto an ice rink, as did fellow Olympians Oaklan and Olympians Bowie and Joey Mantella before her. It was her first time on the ice and she didn’t like it. The movement wasn’t nearly as close to her line as I expected: Snowboarders generate power from their hips rather than their legs. The deck itself was a real challenge. She could not get rid of it without help and did not even stop reliably. It was cold too. So Jackson returned to Florida and the break of ice skating.
But Jackson’s success in figure skating caught the attention of the International Skating Union’s transition program designed to identify athletes who could be good candidates for speed skating. I tried snow again after a few months in Salt Lake City, then stopped again. When dreams of Olympic gold became unforgettable, she returned for good in September 2017.
“It wasn’t any of those things as she was already at the top of another sport and letting her ego get in the way,” her coach Ryan Shimabukuro said. “I’m ready to start over from scratch,” she said.
Although she didn’t start figure skating until the age of 24, Jackson is determined to build an Olympic legacy in figure skating.
Matthew Stockman / International Skating Federation / Getty Images
In January 2018, Shimabukuro Jackson planned to compete in the Olympic Trials, in Milwaukee, only to get some reps against some tough competition in anticipation of a serious effort in ’22. “I didn’t tell my parents and family I was going to the Olympic Trials because it wasn’t for me,” she says. . Olympic trials. “I was going to be in this race, as people were trying to qualify for the Olympics.”
Somehow, Jackson has produced the best skateboard of her life thus far. Jackson began canceling her plans not to skate: She was unable to attend the Roller Derby World Cup in Manchester, England, at the end of January, as it would hinder her trip to the Olympics. However, not much has changed. Shimabukuro, trying to make the expectations reasonable, actually told her: Congratulations, but you’re still not okay. “It was very realistic,” he says. “She just wanted to take the opportunity to get better.”
Jackson does not remember her gender in Pyeongchang. “It’s still not clear to me,” she says. It was the following season, when she made it to the top 10 finals – despite saying “I don’t want to say anything horrible, just a horrible skater actually” – which gave her a sense of how amazing she was. She was hanging out there with the best in the world while she was still learning. “was like , How long does it take to reach the top?Says. “Because that’s where I want to be, and that’s where I know I can be. So it’s just a matter of How long will it take for me?“
This impulse comes naturally to Jackson. I graduated from Florida in 2015 with a degree in Materials Science and Engineering, then an undergraduate degree in computer science and another fellowship in kinesiology. She’s taken a year off from classes to prepare for the Olympics at Shimabukuro in Salt Lake City, because when she’s in school, her studies are her top priority.
“I went to the University of Florida and never went to a football game. Like, what or what? “I’d say she’s a very good student,” laughs Antoine Jackson, Erin’s cousin.
Erin says that when she “finishes rinks” one day, she hopes to combine her passions by developing new sports equipment or prosthetics. In the meantime, she wants her next Olympics to be very different from the first. Four years ago, Jackson had the flu and missed the opening ceremony before the disappointing finish. This year it will be shown on NBC and the media admiration will be overwhelming. Having two-time US Olympic medalist Shani Davis, she will definitely be talked about as a black star in a mostly white sport. “It would be great to see makeup this time next year [speedskating] “It just looks a little different,” Antoine says.
The bright lights might distract some, but Erin thinks they’ll energize them. She always made her teammates go wild, she says, because she tripped during practice and crushed them during the race.
“I’m better under pressure,” says Jackson. “I feel like the more pressure I have, the more I’m in the area and ready to help. My problem is that sometimes when I don’t feel that pressure, I can relax a little bit. So yeah, I think the pressure is really important to make sure I’m in the right mindset.”
“She’s participating in competition day,” says Shimabukuro. “Once the competition starts, the switch is turned on.”
However, he says to remind Jackson that five years later she is still “in her childhood years in sports.” You love how much you still have to learn. But sometimes she feels impatient. She regrets that her starts are inconsistent – she can go up to half a second, more than 500m, which is the difference between winning a gold medal and losing a podium – and she barely has time to train.
“It seems irresponsible to me not to practice my starts off the track,” Jackson says. “But when you think about how many other things I’ve tried to solve over the past four years, it’s like we’re getting started. That’s where we go.”
Maybe in the next four years. First, Erin Jackson goes to Beijing, where she plans to win the gold medal. Then it plans to thaw itself.
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