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There has never been a moment too big, a challenge too daunting for Brittany Bowe.
Dribbling exhibitions at halftime of college basketball games as a 2-year-old? No problem.
Maintain honor roll grades in high school despite a schedule that took her all over the world while other kids her age were dissecting frogs in biology class? Done.
Become one of the first 10 players to ever score 1,000 points at Division I Florida Atlantic? Did that, too.
And now, competing at 500, 1,000 and 1,500 meters in the Winter Olympics while not even four years into a long track speedskating career ... well, what may seem unusual or extraordinary to others is just what the 25-year-old Ocala native does.
"She's a very special athlete, a very unique person," said her father, Mike Bowe. "Not many people are intrinsically motivated. She is in everything she tries.
"I know I'm her dad, and it may come off like I'm her dad, but this is the truth: In all my years of coaching (football and basketball), I've never been around another person like her. She's different."
It doesn't take a parent to see that.
"I'm not surprised in the slightest about anything she accomplishes," said Trinity Catholic soccer coach Adam Long, who graduated from TCHS in 2005, one year before Bowe.
"(To an outsider I can see how) it really would seem unbelievable. These are the Winter Olympics, and it's not like you can do a whole lot with that while growing up in Florida.
"But whatever Brittany wanted to be good at, she was."
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Back in 1996, when she was coaching aspiring inline skaters at Skate Mania, one of Renee Hildebrand's other duties was to serve as a pseudo rink police officer.
After all, when the lights went down and the opening notes of Celine Dion's "Because You Loved Me" were followed by the baritone DJ cooing "couples skate, ladies choice," there really was no place for zig-zaggers or racers.
And when Hildebrand pointed, rule breakers immediately came.
Then, cop would become coach.
"Hey, you can't do that right now, you know that," Hildebrand would say. "But if you really want to skate fast, why don't you...
