She’d felt all the symptoms before, known the unfortunate reality of everything that happens after a sustained concussion. After all, they nearly derailed her entire career, kept her away from the ice, nearly kept her from persevering and returning to eventually win an Olympic medal last February. After a training collision in the summer of 2016, Bowe dealt with lingering aftereffects of the concussion for 18 months.
So when Brittany Bowe crashed on a bike during training a week before the 2019 world sprint championships Heerenveen, Netherlands, a couple of weeks ago — an accident that resulted in another concussion — the 31-year-old American long-track speedskating star was reminded of something.