Erin Jackson, 25, pedals a stationary bicycle as Kelly Clarkson's voice thunders from Milwaukee's Pettit National Ice Center loudspeakers: What doesn't kill you makes you stronger. Jackson sits upright, a bruised banana in her pocket for later. Her frame is petite, with thick quads tapering to improbably narrow, practically Victorian ankles as she spins round and round, her square jaw set with some interior determination.
Twenty minutes later, warmed up, Jackson heads to practice with her U.S. Speedskating long-track team. She wriggles into her skin suit, yanking it up inch by inch. Allergic to the rubber, she scratches a shoulder, tugs the zipper, then throws her shoulder-length braids into a loose bun and stretches her hood over her head. "How's my hair look?" she jokes, as she plods across the mats on her blades, meeting the ice with a single push that sends her gliding out of reach with the smoothness of butter spreading across a hot pan.
It wasn't supposed to be this way. In February 2017, Jackson was a newbie crossover from in-line, trying speedskating for the first time in Salt Lake City at the urging of Team USA recruiter Chris Needham, who'd had his eye on her. "The one person I wanted from in-line was her," he recalls. A 15-year racing veteran with 47 national championships, Jackson was named Female Athlete of the Year for Roller Sports three times and earned MVP honors in roller derby. Even so, "no one was paying attention to Erin," Needham says. "The assumption was that if she'd wanted to cross over, she would have already."
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