EMMA DE BOCK

I'm Emma De Bock, a 17-year-old long-track speed skater from Farmington, Utah. If you'd told me a few years ago I'd be writing this, winning the Viking Race overall title as the first American in over three decades, making Junior Team USA back-to-back, cracking the top 10 in the junior world rankings in the 1000m and 1500m, and now chasing a spot at the Olympics, I would've laughed and told you that you had the wrong girl.

But here we are. And honestly, it started in the most unexpected way.

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I got into figure skating at 11. Nobody in my family had a winter sports background, we're just a regular Utah family who loved the mountains and the cold. But the second I stepped on the ice, I was hooked. I picked things up fast: landed my double Axel in nine months, which apparently takes most skaters years, then moved on to triples. Eventually my coach sat me down and told me she'd taken me as far as she could locally, that to go further, I'd need one of the elite programs out in Colorado, Boston, or California. I was 15. Packing up and moving across the country wasn't realistic, not with school, family, the cost. I could've stayed put, or walked away entirely. Neither felt right.

Then came the pivot. It wasn't one big dramatic decision, it was more like a string of doors opening, one after another.

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It started when my mom got a call from an international skating federation that needed help with lodging and logistics for athletes coming to the World Cup and Four Continents events in Salt Lake City in 2022. Around the same time, my little brother Nickolas got curious about speed skating and joined the Learn to Speed Skate program at the Utah Olympic Oval Speedskating Club. I tagged along to his first club race as the big sister cheering from the stands.

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That's where I met Derek Parra. I had no idea at the time that he was an Olympic gold medalist and the Oval's sports director, total facepalm, I know now, and I'm endlessly grateful for him. He noticed me sitting there and asked, straight up, "Why aren't you on the ice?" I told him I was just there for my brother, that I was a figure skater and didn't know the first thing about speed skating. Classic Derek, he said, "So what? Give it a try."

Something clicked. With a bit of nerves and a lot of "why not," I said yes. I started messing around with short track, those turns felt so strange coming from figure skating.

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Right around then, there was a long track age group national coming up, and I honestly had no idea what that even meant. Sun Lin Lin, who's the assistant director of the Oval's program, yes, another Olympic gold medalist, encouraged me to register. I remember thinking, wait, the race is basically tomorrow — how is this even possible? But she worked so hard behind the scenes to make sure I didn't miss it. That race ended up being my first official, formal race at the Oval. Coach Lin Lin really is the one who opened the long track door for me, and I'm beyond grateful. Another Olympic gold medalist who just believed in me for no reason at all — I'm still kind of speechless about it.

 

By January 2023 though, my mom had signed both Nickolas and me up for the learn-to-skate classes, and a month later we were full club members. My first real long-track sessions started that August, with private lessons from Shani Davis, yes, that Shani Davis, another speedskater legend and I raced for the first time that September. From there, things kept building. I stayed with the Oval's program under Derek, kept working with Shani, and the progress compounded fast. Then my club coach, Tianyu Fu, you guess it right, yes! she is another Olympic gold medalist in short track, referred me to the Oval's elite group, the "fast team." I started training with them once or twice a week, and it was there that Matt Kooreman, another Olympian and, at the time, US Speedskating's Long Track Program Director, took notice too. Looking back, it's still kind of surreal — being surrounded by that many Olympians and legends, all willing to invest in a 15-year-old who'd shown up a few months earlier not knowing the first thing about the sport.

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By December 2023 I'd qualified for AmCup races, my first real step onto the Team USA path. Then in January 2024, I competed at my first Junior World Qualification Championships at the Oval and surprised myself with a 2nd-place finish in the Junior 500m and 6th overall. I remember thinking, okay, this is actually kind of fun, not bad for a newbie. That was the moment I knew figure skating would always be part of me. It gave me my edge control, my jumps, my feel for the ice, but speed skating was where I belonged.

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I left the figure skates behind (maybe with a little nostalgia). The last two seasons have been a whirlwind. I won the overall Viking Race title in the Netherlands — Europe's biggest youth championship, helping the USA finish on top in the B1 division with three golds and two silvers. I competed at U.S. Olympic Trials in Milwaukee, which was nerve wracking in a way I hadn't experienced before, but worth every second. I made back-to-back Junior Team USA selections, competed at Junior Worlds in Italy last year and Germany this year, and I'm sitting in the global junior top 20 in my main distances.

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Right now I'm training with NTDP (the US National Team Development Program) in Utah and with the ISU's CoE program in Thialf, Netherlands — big thanks to Skate Tec in the Netherlands for their support along the way. I'm also balancing full-time school, because life doesn't pause for any of this, and still serving as an ambassador for Utah's 2034 Winter Olympic Games. It's strange to think the same Oval where Derek talked me into trying this sport will host the Games again in 2034. Full circle.

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Early mornings still hit hard sometimes, nobody actually enjoys a 5 a.m. alarm — but they lead to the good stuff: fast laps, new personal bests, trips to places I never expected to see, teammates who feel like family, and that feeling when you cross the line knowing you left everything out there.

The Olympics are the big dream, and they're getting closer. But even on the hard days, I'm grateful, for a random conversation in the stands, for a little brother's new hobby, for every coach who's believed in me, and for a sport that found me exactly when I needed it.

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If you're reading this and thinking about trying something new, a sport, a hobby, anything — just go for it. You never know where one "why not" can take you.

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Keep pushing,

Emma