Erin Jackson first put on ice skates in September 2016, at age 24. She began competitive speedskating in September 2017, and she qualified for the Pyeongchang Olympics in 500-meter long-track speedskating four months later, making her the first Black woman to make a U.S. Olympic team in that discipline. She finished 24th.
This past November, Jackson became the first Black American woman to win a World Cup race, setting two track records in u200bu200bTomaszow Mazowiecki, Poland, in the process.
Now she's an Olympic gold medalist, the first Black woman to win an Olympic gold medal in speedskating and the first American woman to win one in an individual speedskating event since 2002.