Erin Jackson Proves It’s Never Too Late

By Elvin Walker

Erin Jackson’s Olympic story reads like a fairy tale. A dominant athlete in the sport of inline speed skating, Jackson transitioned to the ice with an eye on qualifying for the 2022 Winter Olympic Games in Beijing. In 2018, with just four months of training under her belt, she somehow qualified for her first Olympic team, sending shockwaves through the sport and her own family.

Four years later, Jackson was poised to make a second Olympic team but made a critical technical mistake and had to settle for third place, one spot from earning a ticket to Beijing. Britanny Bowe, the winner of the 500 meters at the Trials, stepped aside and ceded her berth on the team so that Jackson could compete if she had dominated all season.

In Beijing, Jackson captured the 500-meter title, becoming the first American woman in 20 years to win a gold medal in long track speed skating and the first to win the 500 meters in nearly 30 years. More notable, however, is that with her ascent to the top of the podium, Jackson became the first Black woman to win an individual gold medal in the Winter Olympic Games.

Jackson’s journey to Olympic gold started more than 20 years ago in her native Ocala, Florida, when, as an 8-year-old, she began training as an artistic roller skater. Her coaches, DeeDee and Bryan Denney, are parents to two-time U.S. pairs champion and Olympian Caydee Denney and her younger sister, Haven, is the 2017 U.S. pairs champion.

“I was working on a Salchow and a sit spin,” she recalled. “I did it for two years until my coaches moved out to California to help their daughters pursue the Olympics.”

When the Denneys relocated, Jackson shifted her attention to inline speed skating. At the age of 16, she was a member of the USA Inline Skating team. A year later she captured the Junior World Championships title in the 500 meters, and she amassed 47 U.S. titles and 12 World Championships medals in her inline career. In addition to inline skating, Jackson competed in the sport of roller derby for the Jacksonville RollerGirls, where she became a Division 1 Playoff Tournament MVP in 2014.

As Jackson lit the inline world on fire, she began to see her fellow competitors make the transition to the ice with an eye towards qualifying for the Winter Olympic Games. With roller sports still on the outside of the Olympic movement looking in, Jackson began to think about the possibility of giving it a go herself.

“My education has always been very important to me, and I knew that I would not be able to balance my studies and learning the sport,” Jackson explained. “I wanted to graduate from college first.”

Jackson graduated cum laude in 2015 from the University of Florida’s Honors Program with a Bachelor of Science degree in Materials Science and Engineering.

“I specialized in ceramics, which has nothing to do with pottery,” she said with a laugh. “My research was in dental materials, and I was working to create a dental material that would kind of stop cracks in the tooth from continuing.”

With her undergraduate work behind her, Jackson decided that if she was going to make the transition to ice, it was now or never.

“I started out later than probably recommended,” she said. “I went out to Salt Lake City at the beginning of 2017 and spent a month there to see if I liked it, and then went home for the summer to finish out my inline and derby seasons.”

With all her inline commitments complete, Jackson returned to Salt Lake City at the end of September and leaped into training with her typical gusto.

“I spent a lot of time on the ice because I kind of felt like I needed to make up for lost time,” she said. I was even doing the Learn to Skate sessions with the beginners — I felt like I crammed about four years of training into about four months.”

One of the biggest hurdles that Jackson faced was learning how to adapt her inline technique specific to turns onto the ice.

“It was pretty nerve-wracking,” she confessed. “There were a few times in a race where I would do what’s called two footing. It’s where you kind of panic and have both of your feet on the ice at the same time and it’s not something that you’re really supposed to do. I was a two-footer for a while — I kind of got scared, but I’m finally over that fear.”

By January 2018, Jackson found herself heading to the U.S. Olympic Team Trials in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. She approached the event with the hope of gaining valuable experience in preparation for a run at the 2022 Winter Olympic Games. Much to her surprise, she finished in third place, earning a spot on her first Olympic Team.

“I figured I had started a bit too late to have a shot,” Jackson said. “I hadn’t even told my family that I was going to be skating. It was just a race to see how I was doing, and it was a big surprise when I ended up making the team.”

After her Olympic debut in PyeongChang, Jackson began to see improvements in her skating, but the next couple of seasons were a bit frustrating for the 29-year-old.

“The first year after the Olympics was a pretty good year,” she said. “I was happy because I got a couple of top ten finishes, but then the next summer I herniated three discs in my lower back so that season was rough. I went from the middle of the top group to the bottom of the B group that season.”

Jackson salvaged the 2020 season with a seventh-place finish at the World Championships, but soon after the COVID-19 pandemic brought the sport to a screeching halt. When competitions resumed, Jackson experienced a freak accident when she got the hook of a bungee cord stuck in her eye.

“That kind of canceled competitions for me,” she shared. “I was going to go to another competition after I healed up, but then I had close contact with COVID so I couldn’t go. It was basically two years without being able to compete with any sort of consistency.”

By 2022, Jackson was a bona fide Olympic medal threat. She had captured the overall World Cup title for the Women’s 500 meters after dominating the season and seemed poised to easily qualify for her second Olympic team.

At the Trials, however, Jackson caught a bad edge and tripped just enough to slow her momentum in the backstretch of the race. The mistake cost the Olympian about a full second, a lifetime in a sprint like the 500 meters. She finished in third place, one spot from earning an Olympic team berth.

But then her teammate and friend, Brittany Bowe, winner of the event in Milwaukee, ceded her spot on the 500-meter team to Jackson in a beautiful display of sportsmanship.

“I could hear her encouraging me to get it back together after the mistake,” she remembered. “With Britney giving up her spot the way that she did, I realized that she believed in me so much. That made me believe in myself even more. It was a happy motivation for me as I looked forward to Beijing.”

In this situation, karma really did find a way to rectify things. Already a member of Team USA by earning a berth in the 1000-meter event, Bowe was eventually given the opportunity to compete against Jackson in the 500 when another nation returned a quota spot that ultimately went to Bowe. She finished in 16th place in the event but came away with a bronze medal in the 1000 meters.

“When she gave up her spot for me, she had no way of knowing that she would get to compete — she was genuinely giving up her spot for me,” Jackson said. “That she was able to compete and also come home with a medal of her own is awesome.”

Jackson currently plans to try for a third Olympic team in 2026 and hopes to qualify in two events in Milano-Cortina.

“So far, I have only been competitive in the 500, and I want to try to expand that and work on the 1000-meter event. That will be my goal for 2026,” she said.