Erin Jackson is a quick study. The 32-year-old speed skater is aiming to compete in her third Winter Olympics next year, less than a decade after her first time on the ice. The timeline is even more impressive when broken down: Jackson, a former world-class inline skater, tried skating on ice for the first time in 2016, started working with a coach on her technique in 2017, and qualified for the U.S. Olympic Team on January 5, 2018, with what she estimated to be a cumulative four months of on-ice training behind her.
Given what four months yielded – an Olympic spot (she finished 24th in the 500m at the 2018 Olympics in South Korea) – it shouldn’t have come as a surprise what four years would bring. She climbed through the international ranks of the sport, finishing 15th at the world championships in 2019 and then 7th in 2020. And at the 2022 Games in Beijing, Jackson became the first Black American woman to win gold in an individual event at the Winter Olympics, after skating her signature 500m (about the distance of five football fields, inclusive of endzones) in 37.04 seconds.
“It’s not something that I even realized until a couple days after the medal,” Jackson said earlier this month at a World Cup event in Milwaukee. “I wouldn’t have expected that [milestone] to come in 2022. Hopefully we’ll have the second and the third and the fourth coming pretty quickly.”
Jackson could be responsible for those medals herself, if all goes well in the coming year. She’s an early favorite to finish on the podium again in the 500m, and she hopes to compete in the 1000m as well.
Easier said than done, for an athlete who’s had ongoing medical issues since 2019, when she herniated three discs in her lower back; she’s had semi-regular “flare ups” in her back since then, the most recent one requiring a procedure to manage the pain in mid-January. She also says she was experiencing gastrointestinal struggles and fatigue symptoms for much of the last six months, which have largely subsided in recent weeks but for which the root cause was never diagnosed. And in 2023, she had a six-hour surgery to remove 16 non-cancerous fibroids from her uterus, which had caused her pain for several years. Jackson does exercises in bed each morning to get her back ready for basic movements. “It’s been a really long time since I’ve had no pain with just normal things,” she says.
She didn’t qualify to compete in the 1000m event for Team USA this season after her health issues limited her at the trial events – she called the 1000m “a sore subject” – but she has a newfound confidence that she’ll be back to normal for the Olympic season.
“Normally, I’d have a bit of pain standing up after sitting for a while,” she said before racing in Milwaukee. But since the procedure in January, there is far less pain in what she calls “everyday things.”
Back procedures and fatigue and GI issues notwithstanding, she’s remained a contender to be reckoned with at 500 meters: she’s won three medals on the World Cup circuit this season, including two in Milwaukee this month, and currently sits in third place in the season-long World Cup 500m standings.
That puts Jackson squarely in the conversation to win a second Olympic medal in the 500 meters. The only American woman to win multiple Olympic medals at that distance is Bonnie Blair, Team USA’s all-time most decorated Olympic long track speed skater.
While milestones like these – and the others she’s achieved, like becoming the first Black woman to win a speed skating World Cup, or setting the national record in the 500m (both in 2021) – may not be constantly on Jackson’s mind, the gravity of them isn’t lost on her.
“I always try to be a good example anyway,” she says, “but then to have that reminder, like people are looking, people are trying to draw inspiration and things like that, it’s a really awesome feeling.” Messages from moms whose kids are starting skating lessons and social media videos of people “trying to be the next Erin Jackson” are some of the best reminders she receives.
But she says she hasn’t personally seen increased representation in the spaces she occupies – the top levels of speed skating or at elite training centers in Salt Lake City and her hometown of Ocala, Florida. She spent some time working with EDGE Outdoors, an organization that champions inclusion of minority women in snow sports, and was inspired by that experience to dream of a program that might serve a similar purpose in speed skating.
“I want to give back in the form of helping more people experience sports like this. Because I know the winter sports are really expensive. So I would really like to get to work on some sort of scholarship program, or, you know, something like that, to get people involved in our sport.” That’s a goal for when she retires, which she says could be as soon as next year, if she doesn’t find a better solution for the back pain.
She should have her pick of careers in retirement. She owns a bachelor’s degree in engineering and an associate’s degree in computer science, and she’s currently in two more degree programs, studying business and kinesiology, for which she schedules classes and labs around her training schedule.
For now, potential retirement plans and classes may fade into the background as she focuses on the coming 12 months, possibly her final 12 months as a competitive speed skater. But the impact she has made – and knows she can continue to make – never completely fades.
“It’s not like I have the individual thoughts (of being a role model) day to day. It’s just the overall feeling like I’m here to do something important. I’m here to be visible. I’m here to, you know, make a mark.”
Making a mark: something many people spend a lifetime working toward. Sort of like making an Olympic team, or winning an Olympic gold medal. But Erin Jackson didn’t need a lifetime for those. Why should she take her time now?
