Trailblazer Erin Jackson eager to shine for U.S. down the road

GANGNEUNG, SOUTH KOREA» Stories in the Olympics genre, as varied as their characters may be, usually fall into one of a few well-worn categories. There’s the comeback kid, the tragic hero, the unexpected superstar and the “been through so much, you’re just happy to be here” type — and all the variations on those themes.

But the story of Erin Jackson — the first African-American woman to compete for the United States in long-track speedskating — won’t slide neatly into any of those categories. She didn’t expect to be at the PyeongChang Olympics. She wasn’t even trying to be here. And because she is here, the future of American speedskating got a little bit brighter.

Jackson made her only Olympic appearance Sunday night. She finished 24th among 31 skaters in the women’s 500-meter sprint, the shortest, least technical of the longtrack races. Skate as fast as you can. Sprint, don’t glide. Don’t stop until the finish line. Basic, at least relatively speaking.

Nao Kodaira of Japan won the gold medal with a time of 36.94 seconds, with Lee Sanghwa of South Korea taking silver and Karolina Erbanova of the Czech Republic the bronze. Brittany Bowe finished fifth and Heather Bergsma placed 11th for Team USA. Jackson is still working on the basics.

A year ago, she hadn’t tried speedskating at all. She had won scores of national inline skating titles, competed for roller derby titles and earned a degree in material science from the University of Florida. But none of those provided the challenge the Olympics did. Like former Team USA star Apolo Anton Ohno, she considered a move to the ice to reach higher levels of sport than inline skating offered.

So last February, she tried the ice. It didn’t go well. She struggled and stumbled and went back to roller racing for the summer before returning to hone her speedskating skills in Salt Lake City in September. A few months later, she decided to skate at the Olympic trials in Milwaukee, just to see where she stood, to see how much she would have to do to challenge for an Olympic berth at the Beijing Winter Games in 2022.

Jackson had never broken 40 seconds in the 500-meter sprint. (For reference, 30 of the 31 skaters broke that number Sunday night.) Then, suddenly, somehow, at the most remarkable moment, Jackson broke 40 seconds. She qualified for the PyeongChang Olympics.

“My first emotions were like, ‘What’s happening?’ ” Jackson said. “Then I started to get a little stressed out because there were some big life changes coming up that I wasn’t ready for. I had a lot of other things planned for this time in my life.”

When she skated Sunday, her inexperience was evident. She lacked the fluidity of the Norwegian skater next to her.

Jackson said she needs to learn to stay lower, to handle speed into the turns, and even just to glide — something she didn’t have to do in the sprint, but a familiar staple of longer speedskating races in which skaters put their hands behind their back and maintain speed, rather than build it.

“She’s one of those naturally gifted people,” said men’s skater Joey Mantia, who skated on inline teams with Jackson in the past. “She just doesn’t have to work as hard as everyone else to be better than them.”

“I don’t want that to get out!” Jackson joked. “Truthfully, I didn’t train much as an inliner. But that’s definitely not going to work on the ice. I’m going to have to buckle down and make sure I’m training all the time.”

Once she hones that technique, Jackson said, she hopes to add more distances to her résumé, to build up to compete for real at the 2022 Olympics.