Ocala at Winter Olympics: The unlikely pipeline at the heart of the U.S. speedskating team

Ocala, Florida, is a town of about 60,000 people located between Gainesville and Orlando. Palm trees dot downtown. Temperatures last week touched 80 degrees.

It's not the kind of place you'd expect to produce Winter Olympians. 

But in a strange twist – and with the almost inadvertent help of a Florida grandmother – that is exactly what's happened.

Three of the top U.S. speedskaters at the 2022 Winter Olympics – Brittany Bowe, Erin Jackson and Joey Mantia – all hail from Ocala, which does not even have a year-round ice rink. All three are legitimate medal contenders. And all three started out as inline skaters on a team that is now called Ocala Speed, coached by the same woman, Renee Hildebrand.

FOLLOW THE CHASE FOR GOLD:Sign up for Olympic newsletter to get daily updates

BEIJING TEXT UPDATES: Get behind-the-scenes access to the Tokyo Olympics

"When they were younger, I still had hopes that (inline) speedskating would get into the Summer Olympics," Hildebrand told USA TODAY Sports. "I was hoping that by the time they got to that age, we would be in the Olympics and they would be some of my first Olympians, Brittany and Joey.

"We didn’t. But at the same time, I put in their heads that they could be Olympians."

Bowe, 33, and Mantia, 35, are making their third Olympic appearances in Beijing, and each has won a world championship on ice. Bowe was also selected as a flag-bearer for Team USA at the opening ceremony Friday, after bobsled pilot Elana Meyers-Taylor tested positive for COVID-19.

Jackson, meanwhile, is making her second trip to the Games, this time as the top-ranked skater at 500 meters. She is the odds-on favorite to win gold at that distance after securing her spot in dramatic and heartwarming fashion.

The 29-year-old stumbled at the Olympic trials and was in line to miss out on qualifying until Bowe volunteered to give up her own spot in the event, to allow Jackson to compete. The U.S. later received an extra quota spot at the distance, which means both Jackson and Bowe will now be able to compete.

For all three skaters, it's been a remarkable ascent, especially considering that they've had more experience and accomplishments on concrete and asphalt than ice. Mantia, for instance, won 28 world titles on inline skates before making the switch.

"They had to break muscle memory that they had for all these years, and then develop new muscle memory (on ice)," Hildebrand said. "But what they did have going for them is that they were dedicated athletes. They were motivated, they were disciplined, they had the work ethic – they knew what it took to be at that level."

Hildebrand has been living in Ocala and coaching some form of roller skating since 1987. When asked about when she started coaching inline skating, she notes that the skates didn't actually become popular until the early 1990s. She coached "quads" – the skates with a big wheel in each corner of the bottom – before that.

Mantia was her first star pupil on inlines. She describes him as a skating fanatic with a tireless work ethic. "By the time he was 10, he was training like an Olympian," she said.

Bowe came next, winning eight world championships while also pursuing a college basketball career at Florida Atlantic. Then Jackson, a seven-time world medalist.

Hildebrand said that early in her career, there weren't many books or guides for coaching inline speedskating. So instead, she borrowed drills used by Dianne Holum, the coach of five-time Winter Olympic gold medalist Eric Heiden. 

Those drills began to pay off as, one by one, her star inliners began to move over to the ice, to pursue a chance of making it to the Games.

"I think if inline had been an Olympic sport, we wouldn't have gone looking somewhere else, you know?" Jackson said. "But it's not. So we're just very fortunate to have another outlet, another way to kind of get there."

Hildebrand thinks Bowe, Jackson and Mantia are all better – and more comfortable – on inline skates, even years after they shifted their focus to the ice. If roller skating had received the same treatment as skateboarding, she said, Mantia and Bowe would have won most of the distances.

"Joey, Brittany – I don’t feel either one of them has ever gotten the start that they had in inline," she said.

Hildebrand said she has lost faith at this point, that inline skating will ever become a Summer Olympic sport. But watching the Ocala trio compete in Beijing will still be a moment of pride for the 35-year coach – and, really, the whole Florida town where they were raised.

After Bowe won a team bronze medal at the 2018 Games, a white limousine drove her, Jackson and Mantia into downtown Ocala, and Mayor Kent Guinn gave them keys to the city. This time, all three could return with medals around their necks.

Not bad for a town without an ice rink.

"I guess there’s just something in the water down there," Bowe told Olympics.com.

Contact Tom Schad at tschad@usatoday.com or on Twitter @Tom_Schad.