Sports Illustrated - USA (2022-02)

with a chuckle, 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 her first. Four years ago, Jackson caught the f lu and

missed the opening ceremony before her underwhelming

finish. This year NBC will showcase her, and the media

crush will be overwhelming. There will surely be talk of

her following the U.S.’s Shani Davis, a two-time Olympic

medalist, as a Black star in an almost entirely white sport.

“It would be cool to see, this time next year, the makeup

of [speedskating] look a little different,” Antoine says.

The bright lights might be distracting to some, but

Erin believes they will energize her. She used to drive her

inline teammates wild, she says, because she would falter

during practice, then crush them in a race.

“I do better under pressure,” Jackson says. “I feel like

the more pressure that people put on me, the more I’m

going to be in the zone and ready to deliver. My issue is

sometimes, if I don’t feel that pressure, I can get a little

bit too relaxed. So yeah, I think the pressure is really

important for making sure that I’m in the right mindset.”

Shimabukuro says, “She’s a game-day racer. The

moment the competition starts, a switch f lips.”

Still, he says he reminds Jackson that five years in, she is

still “in her infancy in the sport.” She loves how much she

has left to learn. But she sometimes feels impatient. She

laments that her starts are inconsistent—they can range

by as much as half a second, which, over 500 meters, is

the difference between winning gold and missing the

podium entirely—and she barely has time to practice them.

“To me it sounds irresponsible to not practice my starts

outside of the race setting,” Jackson says. “But when you

think about how many other things I’ve been trying to fix

over the past four years, it’s like, We’ll get to the starts.

We’ll get to those.”

Maybe in the next quadrennial. First, Erin Jackson is

headed to Beijing, where she plans to win gold. Then she

plans to get off the ice all by herself.

SUMMER BRITCHER

27 ye ars old › Luge

Eyeing her third Olympics, the

Glen Rock, Pa., native is the all-time luge

singles leader with five World Cup victories,

but she has yet to make the podium at

a Games. Britcher won a silver medal

in the sprint World Cup race in Sochi in

early December, giving USA Luge its best

individual finish in nearly two years.

ELANA MEYERS TAYLOR

37 ye ars old › Bobsled

A three-time Olympic medalist from

Douglasville, Ga., who captured silver in

the two-woman event in 2018, she took the

entire ’19–20 season off after giving birth

to her son, Nico, with husband and fellow

bobsledder Nic Taylor. Since returning,

she’s become a top contender in monobob,

the new solo Olympic event. —J.L.

NO STRANGERS TO THE WINTER GAMES,

THESE SLIDING SPORTS

VETERANS ARE HUNGRY FOR

HARDWARE

ICE MASTERS

“The more pressure that

people put on me, the more

I’m going to be (^) IN THE ZONE
AND READY TO DELIVER,”
says Jackson. “If I don’t feel
that, I can get too relaxed.”
DANIEL KOPATSCH/GETTY IMAGES (BRITCHER); CAROLINE SEIDEL/PICTURE ALLIANCE/GETTY IMAGES (MEYERS TAYLOR)
MEET TEAM USA