Gifted a second chance, Erin Jackson looks to thank Brittany Bowe with Olympic gold

The world’s top-ranked 500-meter speed skater feared she had blown her chance to make the Olympics.

Erin Jackson’s path to Beijing went from presumed to precarious after a stunning slip during her race at last month’s U.S. Olympic Trials.

As she zoomed down the backstretch at Milwaukee’s Pettit National Ice Center, Jackson lost her balance when she planted her right skate and caught a bad edge. Her skates skidded. Her arms flailed. Her chest flew up. Though she managed to avoid falling, she estimates she lost at least a full second trying to regain her speed.

“A slip is fine,” Jackson, 29, told Yahoo Sports. “I could have recovered from a slip. This was a near fall. Trying to rebuild my speed when something like that happens where you stand up and the wind catches you, it wasn’t ideal for sure.”

To qualify for the Olympics in the 500, Jackson needed to produce one of the two fastest times at Trials. She instead could salvage only third in a race she had been heavily favored to win, finishing almost five-tenths of a second behind winner Brittany Bowe and almost four-tenths of a second behind second-place Kimi Goetz.

Read the entire article at Yahoo Sports: https://sports.yahoo.com/gifted-a-second-chance-erin-jackson-looks-to-thank-brittany-bowe-with-olympic-gold-111741907.html