USA speedster Brittany Bowe’s eyes on the prize ahead of “sweet spot” 1000m

“Gold,” said Brittany Bowe with no hint of hesitation in her voice.

“I’d be lying if I said my goal [in Beijing] was anything less than that,” she added in an exclusive interview with Olympics.com in the build-up to her third Winter Games and speaking about her strongest event – the 1000m race she calls her “sweet spot”.

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The 33-year-old Bowe does not do hesitation. Not in anything. Not before a race, waiting for the blast and echo of the starting gun out on the speed skating oval. Or talking about what makes her grueling sport so special. Even when talks turns to the difficulties she’s endured in arriving where she finds herself today – on the cusp of Olympic glory – she’s admirably direct.

A gift for an old Ocala friend

Bowe gained a heightened kind of celebrity in the run-up to these Games by giving her Olympic spot to longtime friend – and former childhood inline skating teammate from Ocala, Florida, Erin Jackson who’d fallen uncharacteristically at the U.S. team trials and could have missed the Beijing Games where she was favourite for 500m gold.

• READ | Bowe and Jackson Pair up to Produce 500m gold

That selflessness, and team spirit, which came to Bowe with about as much difficulty as drawing breath, saw her become a symbol for friendship and solidarity – the kind of generous romanticism that sport can offer up every so often. Such was Bowe’s celebrity at that moment, she was invited to help curler John Shuster carry the U.S. flag at the Opening Ceremony – something she calls “the honour of a lifetime.”

But you do get the sense that all of this is secondary to Bowe. And now, with her moment of surprise pre-Games celebrity behind her, she’s right where she wants to be: Poised on the starting line, blades glinting out a threat under the bright lights, a sheet of smooth blue ice stretching out before her.

“What I love to do is race,” said Bowe, the fastest woman on skates in the 1000m event, having set the current world record in March of 2019 with a time of 1:11.61 at a World Cup event on her home track in Utah. “There’s definitely a target on my back. That’s definitely added pressure, but it also gives me confidence because nobody’s gone faster than I’ve gone.”

There’s a Goldilocks-and-the-Three-Bears element to speed skaters and their favourite disciplines. And while Bowe finished 16th in the 500m race here in Beijing (circumstances conspired to see her skate even after she gave her spot in that race to Jackson) and 10th in the 1500, she’s not chewing her fingernails over it.

Without a shadow of a doubt, Bowe’s race is the 1000m. It fits her like the skinsuit she wears out on the ice to wring out the last drops of aerodynamism.

And the 1000m race here in Beijing is her race to lose.

1000m ‘sweet spot’ for Bowe

“The 500m is just a pure sprint – you just go,” said Bowe, speaking in granular detail about her sport and the physical demands of it that she calls “the hardest thing” she’s ever done. “But the 1000m is something some of the sprinters can’t handle – maybe for 600m yeah, they can do it, but then they can’t handle the lactate that builds up.

“So the 1000 is my sweet spot,” added the seven-time world and defending champion . “I have the speed in my favour but I can also tolerate the lactate and push through the pain. It’s my favourite race – it’s a really cool combination of speed, power and endurance.”

These are attributes Bowe, tall and roped with lean muscle – something close to the platonic ideal of an athlete – fairly oozes. And she has from an early age, when she was spotted at a birthday party in a roller rink by famed Florida-based inline skating coach Renee Hildebrand, who had a hand in helping forge not only Bowe, but Jackson – who made history with her 500m gold – and Beijing 2022 team pursuit bronze winner Joey Mantia too.

“She [Bowe] had such perseverance and such strength and willingness,” said Hildebrand, who took a 13-year-old Bowe to the Salt Lake City Olympics in 2002 – before she’d ever been on ice skates – to see icons of the day like fellow Floridian Jennifer Rodriguez and Apolo Ohno make it look oh-so-easy.

• READ | USA Speed Stars and their Wheeled, Floridian Roots

Teenage Bowe didn’t know at the time, but she was looking into a crystal ball at her own future. “She was always willing to push, to work extremely hard and to push past her comfort zone,” added Hildebrand about Bowe, one of her prized pupils.

Bowe’s talent and dedication while growing up in Ocala, Florida – a town without an ice rink – was such that she had almost too many doors open in front of her. She had to quit football (soccer in the States) something she calls “her first heartbreak”. It conflicted with basketball – her main sport, which she played at the point guard position at top collegiate level with realistic goals of a future in the WNBA.

And all of that was while she spent her summers flying around an inline track on wheels – winning eight world championships and a gold at the Pan-Am Games of 2007.

Early Olympic dreams

“But as far back as I can remember, back when I was a little kid, I would always tell people I was going to be an Olympian,” said Bowe, who didn’t lace up ice skates until 2010, when she moved to Salt Lake City to take a run at her Olympic dream. “I just didn’t know in what sport.”

These Beijing Games are not Bowe’s first go-round under the glare of the Olympic spotlight.

She arrived in Sochi in 2014, as a young up-and-comer only four years off wheels and still learning, but holding the 1000m world record. “I was an immature skater in many ways,” she said of those Sochi Games, where, at the age of 25, she finished eighth in her pet 1000m event. “I almost tried too hard in every single race.”

Four years later, In PyeongChang, Bowe was still recovering from a concussion suffered after a collision with a teammate in training that left her with crippling anxiety and panic for the first time in her life and, as she puts it: “barely able to function as as human". Still she fought against the clock to reach the 2018 Games – where she finished a disappointing fourth in her individual event but managed to win a bronze in the team pursuit.

Now, though – healthy and at the peak of her powers – Bowe is exactly where she wants to be heading into her signature event on an Olympic stage.

Target on her back

“When you have that target on your back, you have nothing to gain and everything to lose,” she said, making no mistake about her intentions for individual gold. “So it’s really important to not skate scared – you have to go after it like you’re still trying to climb that ladder.”

For someone steeped in team sports from an early age, Bowe has a keen understanding of the solitary nature of individual long-track speed skating. And the goal she’s chasing here in Beijing weighs heavy across her strong shoulders.

“At the end of the day, everything is on my shoulders,” said Bowe, chief among the favourites alongside Japan’s Miho Takagi and young Dutch star Jutta Leerdam. “It’s either I make it or break it for myself. And to be able to look in the mirror and say ‘you did it’ or ‘you didn’t do it’ is pretty cool.

“It leaves no questions,” Bowe added before she heads out to the starting position, a ribbon of ice in front of her and a long-held goal there to be grabbed. “You have to tread carefully when you set high expectations, but that’s what I’m driven to do.”