It’s hammer time.
Long before U.S. speed skater Brittany Bowe was attempting to win a gold medal, she was looking to get her hands on a gold charm. It was in the shape of a hammer, and it hung around the neck of her inline skating coach Renee Hildebrand.
“When they were young, I would always tell them, ‘It’s time to hammer! Hammer time! Hammer time!’ You gotta go!’” Hildebrand said. “And that meant just pick it up, go fast.”
She received the charm in the 1990s as a birthday gift from her skaters — a golden ode to her speed-boosting motto.
“Something that we always did, that really made me feel empowered, was she had a gold necklace with a hammer on it, and before our races, we would rub the hammer,” Bowe said when the two had a surprise reunion on NBC Local’s “Launching Legends.” “And it was hammer time.”
All of Hildebrand’s young skaters would rub the charm for good luck.
“Well, Brittany was always the cutest at that because she would rub the hammer, rub her legs, rub her arms, rub everything,” Hildebrand said. “She wanted all the luck she could get from the hammer.”
It led Bowe to more gold.
Many years later, after switching from inline skating to speed skating, she went on to win 13 gold medals in the world championships. Bowe, a three-time Olympian with two bronze medals, now heads to the 2026 Milan Cortina Games for her fourth and final appearance at 37 years old.
Luck, of course, has had little to do with Bowe’s success. It was a product of her skill, work ethic and passion. And coaches like Hildebrand.
“She instilled in me absolute greatness,” Bowe said. “She was always so confident in me, believed in me, and she really pushed me to unlock different stages of greatness. And I definitely wouldn’t be here without her.”
‘My second mom’
Bowe was 8 years old when she was invited to the local skating rink in her hometown of Ocala, Florida, for a birthday party. When the kids laced up their skates and stepped onto the rink, one speedster caught the eye of a spectator.
Hildebrand, a physical therapist who started coaching in 1991, was there for skating practice, and she was scouting.
“I always, of course, check out any kids I might think need to be recruited for speed skating,” she said. “I look out there and there’s this little girl on these rollerblades, and she is just running. I don’t even think the wheels were rolling, she was just running on them all the way around the rink. After I watched for a little while I just kind of chuckled because she just couldn’t go fast enough.”
The wheels couldn’t keep up with Bowe.
Hildebrand later approached Bowe’s mother Debbie to see if her daughter would be interested in joining her skating team. Those hopes were seemingly dashed when Hildebrand learned the 8-year-old was already a multi-sport athlete with an over-booked schedule.
And yet, when the next skating practice began, Bowe was there.
“From that day on,” Hildebrand said, “she loved the sport.”
‘Lived at the skating rink’
The rink became Bowe’s home away from home.
“I started inline skating when I was 8 years old and lived at the skating rink,” she said. “So, Renee naturally became my second mom.”
Hildebrand helped teach her fundamentals and discipline, while also cutting out neon green paper hammers to tape on the inside of each of her skaters’ helmets.
“So we always had that hammer time with us,” Bowe said.
It showed. Bowe proved to be a natural on skates, thriving at starts and sprints.
“Early on, she could beat some of the older kids and some of the boys, and that would really upset those boys,” Hildenbrand said. “So, I loved putting her in the groups with those kids that were a little bit faster than her because she would always step up and skate just as fast.”
Other times Bowe defeated opponents, not solely with speed, but strategy.
“Even if you might be a little faster than her,” Hildebrand said, “she may beat you just by being smarter.”
Bowe split her time between the rink and hardwood, going on to play high school basketball, where she was coached by her father Mike. She earned a Division I scholarship to play point guard at Florida Atlantic University. After college, she had to make a career choice: play professional basketball in Europe or chase her skating dreams.
She made her decision after watching the 2010 Vancouver Olympics.
“All these people that we know that were inliners are doing so good on the ice,” Hildebrand said. “She goes, ‘I think I want to try it.’ So, she moved out there, and the rest is history”
‘One more time’
Bowe relocated to the national team’s home base in Salt Lake City and began her Olympic quest. Roughly two years later, she made her way to the World Cup podium, taking second place overall in the 1,000m competition. It was the first of many podium steps she’d climb on the global level.
She made her Olympic debut in 2014 at the Sochi Games and, in her second Olympic appearance, took home a medal after placing third in team pursuit. She added another bronze in Beijing with a third-place finish in the 1,000m.
She was one of three Olympic speed skating medalists to have been coached by Hildebrand, along with Erin Jackson and Joey Mantia, her fellow Ocala natives.
“There’s a lot of theories to that,” Hildebrand said of Ocala being a speed skating hotbed. “Some people think it’s in the water, maybe it has something to do with the fast horses, too. I don’t know. We’re known for our thoroughbreds. I always say we’re called ‘Slowcala’ except for the fast skaters and fast horses.”
Other than the tap water, she added the local speed skating prowess is simply a “matter of making kids want to do something bad enough that they stick with it long enough to be successful.”
Bowe made headlines at the 2021 Olympic Trials when, after winning the 500m, she gave up her Olympic spot to Jackson after she slipped during the race and finished third. Jackson went on to win gold at the Olympics.
“Not too many people are gonna do that,” Hildebrand said of Bowe giving up her spot. “That was a big deal. People called me and said, ‘Can you believe it?’ I said, ‘Absolutely I can believe Brittany did that. I would almost expect her to do it.’”
‘Getting her some hammer power’
Having helped produce three Olympic medalists earned Hildebrand induction into the Florida Sports Hall of Fame in 2022. During her induction ceremony, Bowe made a surprise appearance.
“It was great because she sat next to me and when I was kind of nervous I was like, ‘Oh, gosh, these people are really outclassing me,” Hildebrand said of being enshrined alongside professional athletes. “And [Bowe] would be like, ‘No, they’re not! You had three athletes in the Olympics.’”
Hildebrand returned the surprise in October, appearing at a Team USA Media Summit in New York during what Bowe thought was a promotional interview. Bowe, who said she doesn’t cry easily, was brought to tears as the two embraced.
“It’s hammer time!” Bowe said.
“It’s hammer time, baby,” Hildebrand responded.
“One more time,” Bowe said.
“We wouldn’t be here today without the foundation that our early childhood coaches have made,” she later added. “So, it’s really impactful.”
Hildebrand said it means the world to her that her skaters express the impact she has made and respect their inline roots.
“As a coach, you sacrifice as well as the kids do,” she said. “A couple of marriages, family being upset with me when I miss holidays. You do sacrifice a lot. The athletes sacrifice way more … So when you see something like that and you know that they appreciated you, it’s like that makes you know that you did the right thing and you stuck to your guns. And when I was asked, ‘Is it me or is it skating?’ and I pick skating, I picked the right thing.”
The gold charm is no more, with the hammer that provided fortune and acceleration to many of Hildebrand’s skaters having gotten lost years ago. But the luck, the lessons and the memories remain.
“There’s a picture that I have, one of my favorite pictures of us together,” Hildebrand said of a photo of herself with a young Bowe. “I have my arm around her and she’s touching the hammer, getting her some hammer power.”
The two hope they’ll soon be able to take a new picture together, this time with a gold medal hanging around Bowe’s neck.
“I’m praying,” Hildebrand said, “that she has her best Olympics ever.”
It’s hammer time.
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