Calling Brittany Bowe is an “exceptional athlete” seems like an understatement.
The American Olympian has tackled a number of sports in her life and excelled at every one. As a youth she was on a statewide boys traveling soccer team in Florida. She played Div. I college basketball for the Florida Atlantic University Owls.
Yet it was inline speed skating where her dominance knew no bounds. She competed in numerous world championships at both the junior and senior levels, winning a whopping 32 medals.
It was only in 2010 that she took her inline speed skating experience to the ice. From 2013 to 2016 she won nine medals at World Championships and set three world records.
Her lone Winter Olympics in Sochi in 2014 appearance saw her finish out of the top five in all three of her races.
That was then. Now Bowe is competing in four speed skating events in Pyeongchang — the 500-meter, 1,000-meter, 1,500-meter and team pursuit.
Bowe is in a long-term, long-distance relationship with fellow inline skater Manon Kamminga. Bowe hasn’t been shy about her relationship, sharing photos on social media and talking about her love publicly.
“It’s nice being with somebody that has the same passion, same drive, same goals,” Bowe told NBC last year. ”It’s obviously difficult living on different sides of the world. But we’re both focused on our goal. She’s trying to make her team. I’m trying to make my team. So it just works out.”
We can’t find anywhere that Bowe has declared herself gay, lesbian, queer or any other letter in the LGBTQ alphabet, so we’re certainly not going to label her.
It’s just nice knowing that she has found love, that it’s with another woman, and that she hasn’t been averse to talking about it publicly.
While Gus Kenworthy and Adam Rippon have seemed to get all of the media attention as gay American Olympians, Bowe could be the one taking home some hardware.
You can find Brittany Bowe on Instagram @BrittanyBowe, and on Twitter as well. She also has a Facebook fan page.
You can find complete Winter Olympics 2018 coverage on SB Nation, and Outsports will have the LGBT angle.
