Maame Biney, First Black Woman To Make U.S. Olympic Short Track Speedskating Team, Is Pioneering A New Technology

Maame Biney wants to change the sport of short track speedskating for all the competitors who come after her—on and off the ice.

Biney, 22, became the first Black woman to qualify for a U.S. Olympic short track speedskating team ahead of the 2018 Pyeongchang Olympics, when she was just 18 years old. She was also the youngest skater in the team’s history.

Fast-forward four years, and Biney feels a responsibility to the generation of speedskaters that will follow her, knowing that she’s blazing a trail in her sport.

“I’m very honored to have that title and I hope to use that for good and carry it with respect,” Biney told me by phone. “I think my main goal is to make sure that other young Black women, especially little girls, realize anything they put their mind to is very much achievable. I really do hope that before I even stop skating that there are young Black women in the sport so that I can be a role model to them.”

But Biney hopes to revolutionize speedskating more directly on the ice as well—namely, in changing the way skaters train forever.

Heading into the Beijing Games, Biney was the first to use a revolutionary new speedskating training technology. Using motion sensors and pressure technology to capture her every move on the ice in 3D, Biney and her coach Simon Cho are hoping bring home the United States’ first Olympic women’s short track medal in 12 years.

They are also hoping Biney can set a new world record.

The world record for the women’s 500 meter is 41.936, set by Canada’s Kim Boutin at an ISU Short Track Speed Skating World Cup event in Salt Lake City, Utah, in November 2019. Biney’s personal best is 42.807, so she needs to shave a full second off her time—which is much easier said than done.

The process of Biney learning how to incorporate this technology into her training with her sponsor, Red Bull, was documented in a new short film Bladerunner.

When Biney skates a lap wearing the motion sensors, she’s able to study her performance via an on-screen avatar, as well as precise measurements of things like her shoulder angle and velocity.

“It’s definitely out of this world,” Biney said. “I’m so honored to be the first person to ever use this technology.”

“If we can use this science, combined with her raw power, I think her potential is virtually limitless,” Cho says.

Biney’s speedskating technique isn’t necessarily textbook—which tends to be important when you’re reaching speeds up to 30 mph with 17-inch knives on your feet—but she makes up for it with her sheer power.

Off the ice, the Ghana native who relocated to Virginia with her father when she was five years old is recognizable for her megawatt smile and infectious laugh—but after her first Olympics, these belied a discomfort with the new spotlight she found herself in.

Like many first-time Olympians, she didn’t know how to deal with the newfound weight she felt placed on her shoulders.

At 22—having celebrated her birthday with her teammates on the flight to Beijing—Biney now feels more unencumbered by expectations, understanding her family’s and community’s support isn’t dependent on how she performs.

She’s also grateful to compete for an adopted country that has allowed her to make her living doing this.

“It’s such an honor to represent the U.S. because the U.S. has given me so many opportunities and also my dad so many opportunities for me to be here right now,” Biney said. “I’m entirely grateful. I know that if it was the same situation in Ghana I would be doing different things. I wouldn’t be here.”

Bringing home that U.S. Olympic short track medal for the first time in over a decade, then, would “mean a lot,” Biney said.

“In the past year there’s definitely been a lot of good change for the team,” she added. “I can definitely see myself and my teammates doing really well at the Games.”

In her Olympic debut in 2018, Biney made it to the quarterfinals of the 500m race—where she has the best chance of setting a new world record—but was eliminated in the qualifying heat of the 1500m event.

Four years later, she’s poised to leave Beijing with some hardware. She understands what has changed in her skating. In 2018, she would enter the corner too early and pivot too long, slowing her down. She’s learned so much about her technique—including from the motion-capture technology she worked on with Red Bull—and can exert more pressure onto the ice, curving into the exit of the corner.

Biney was “very much a nervous wreck” when she made her first full World Cup team in 2017, she says. Not long after, she made the Olympics.

“It was so much in one year,” she says. Now that she has multiple World Cups under her belt, she feels better equipped to go into her second Olympic Games.

Biney impressed last season by sweeping the podium at the 2021 U.S. Short Track Speedskating Championships, winning gold in the 500m, 1000m and 1500m and earning the women’s overall title.

Biney and teammate Kristen Santos, 27, advanced to the quarterfinal of the women’s 500m at the Beijing Games. Santos won her heat, while Biney came in third in hers, but Biney’s time (42.919) topped her teammate’s (43.579).

The women’s 500m quarterfinal will begin at 6:30 a.m. ET on Monday (8:30 p.m. in China). The final will be held soon after, at 6:46 a.m. ET.

When you tune in, you won’t really be seeing Biney take the ice. You’ll be watching Anna Digger, an alter ego she created in childhood. Biney’s bubbly, exuberant personality isn’t the least bit put-on; she really is that nice. As a result, she sometimes struggles to be a killer—something short track speedskating, which pits athletes against each other rather than a clock, requires.

Tapping into her alter ego allows Biney to be fierce and strong. It’s a healthy coping mechanism for an elite athlete.

Indeed, Biney is so interested in the different ways competitive athletes think that when she’s done competing, she wants to become a psychologist.

“I knew that even from a very young age I wanted to do something to help people, and I never really knew what it was,” Biney says. Then the University of Utah graduate settled on psychology—after changing her major five times, she says.

“Specifically, I want to be a sports psychologist,” Biney said. “I’ve been through so much mentally and physically, to use the knowledge I’ve gained as an elite athlete to help other athletes.

“To not do that would be a shame. I can help so many athletes, so many people around the world.”