Brittany Bowe | Beijing 2022 Olympic Profile
Long track speedskater Brittany Bowe reveals how her college basketball career helped transform her into an elite Winter Olympic athlete. Already an Olympic bronze medalist (2018), Bowe hopes her third Olympics will be the charm in her quest for gold.
Video Transcript
[MUSIC PLAYING]
BRITTANY BOWE: Hi, everyone. I'm Brittany Bowe, two-time Olympian who go in for my third Olympics. Going through four years of collegiate basketball definitely helped build my backbone very strong. If anybody has been a part of a collegiate system, you know the system is very, very challenging with how-- dealing with how to navigate classes, training, your coach is probably going to be the hardest person on you in your entire life.
And they'll dig your grave, they'll pick you back up out of your grave. So my four years of playing basketball really taught me how to be resilient and to overcome obstacles. And to just be a team player. Well, in basketball you're using every muscle from the top of your head to the tip of your toes. And we fast forward into speed skating, and it is a very lower body-dominant sport.
So I think everything that I have taken from basketball, just being able to do very athletic movements in different directions, stop, go, has just made my body prepared to be able to adapt and learn a new skill, really. There was never a question in my mind that I wasn't going for Beijing.
And going back on the previous year with all of the COVID challenges, and you're just training, training, training. And at some point, obviously with the rest of my Team USA teammates here, our ultimate goal is to compete in Beijing. But last year, training can get pretty monotonous. Because in the short term, you're kind of-- what am I training for? What am I training for?
And thankfully, we got to go into the bubble in the Netherlands and compete in two World Cups and a world championship, and yes winning a gold medal in the 1000, and a silver medal in the 1500 has definitely sprung my confidence and relit the fire to go on for another year. And just knowing that I'm the best in the world coming into this year is a blessing, for sure.