Katie Tannenbaum first got hooked on competing in the Winter Olympics while watching it on television as a teenager.
Nearly 20 years later, the St. Thomas resident won’t just be watching the Olympics — she’ll be competing as well.
Now 36, Tannenbaum has earned a berth in the women’s skeleton competition at the 2022 Beijing Olympics — the first athlete from the territory to qualify for the Winter Games since 2014.
Tannenbaum received the official word of her Olympic qualification Monday afternoon from the Virgin Islands Olympic Committee after it was approved by the International Bobsled and Skeleton Federation, the sport’s international governing body.
“I got the word very quickly,” Tannenbaum said in a telephone interview Tuesday from Innsbruck, Austria, where she has been in training. “We knew the information was going to be coming, we were just anxiously awaiting it. I couldn’t be happier.”
The last athlete from the U.S. Virgin Islands to compete in the Winter Games was St. John’s Jasmine Campbell, who was in two alpine skiing events — the women’s giant slalom and women’s slalom — at the 2014 Sochi Olympics in Russia. She finished 56th out of 90 entries in the giant slalom and 43rd out of 78 entries in the slalom.
And, of course, there’s St. Thomas’ Anne Abernathy, who has competed in five Winter Olympics in the women’s luge — in 1988, 1992, 1994, 1998 and 2002. She was also entered in the 2006 Winter Games in Torino, Italy, but was forced to withdraw after breaking her right wrist and scapula during pre-competition practice.
Tannenbaum will be competing in the women’s skeleton, riding a carbon fiber-and-steel sled slightly smaller than those used by luge riders.
And she’ll be doing so going head-first down the 1.9-kilometer (1.18-mile) track at the National Sliding Center in Yanqing, China, about 47 miles northwest of Beijing.
It was watching the Winter Olympics — the 2002 Games in Salt Lake City, Utah — on TV as a teenager that got Tannenbaum hooked on the skeleton.
“I look at those races and say, ‘How could anyone NOT want to do this? It looks like the best time,’” she said. “That’s exactly what I thought when I first saw it. Ambition drove me from there.”
However, it wasn’t until 2010 that Tannenbaum decided to act on that ambition.
“It’s a relatively inaccessible sport, as you can imagine,” she said. “It was years and years of me being continually being exposed to it once in a while and thinking, ‘Jeez, I’d really love to do that or try that.’
“Finally, after that happening enough, I thought, ‘You know what? I’m going to do it.’”
So Tannenbaum flew to Park City, Utah — where the bobsled, skeleton and luge competitions were held for the 2002 Salt Lake City Games — and had her first run on a skeleton sled.
“Well, I’m still doing it a decade later,” she said. “So I guess I must’ve liked it.”
Tannenbaum began competing in national and continental events a year later — her first was at Lake Placid, N.Y., on March 31, 2011 — and she entered her first IBSF World Championships in 2015, finishing 25th at Winterberg, Germany. A year later, she was competing on the IBSF’s World Cup tour.
Her first attempt at qualifying for the Winter Olympics came in 2018, but she fell short — even after an appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport challenging the IBSF’s allocation system.
However, that didn’t discourage Tannenbaum, and neither have the accidents that come with racing a lightweight sled that can reach 80 mph or more if conditions are right.
The worst wreck she’s had in competition came just over 13 months ago — and it made her a YouTube sensation for several weeks.
Tannenbaum was competing in the IBSF World Cup event in Igls, Austria, on Dec. 11, 2020, when her sled collided with a wooden broom — used to clear snow off the track surface — that had fallen onto the track.
The impact damaged Tannenbaum’s sled, and left her with a sore neck — and, by her own admission, briefly thinking about quitting the sport.
“The injury wasn’t too bad, but that was a pretty scary moment,” she said. “That was something that is incredibly abnormal in my sport, for something like that to happen. It really spooks you.
“It’s probably been the closest I’ve ever been to thinking about being done with the sport when that happened. But wanting to be here, where we are today — going to the [Winter] Games and representing the Virgin Islands at the Beijing Olympics, that kept me going.”
Now that Tannenbaum has qualified for the 2022 Beijing Winter Games, she said that everything that she’s gone through the past 10-plus years — both good and bad — has been worth it.
“This is satisfying for every athlete, no matter what their journey has been,” she said. “It’s where we’re all striving to end up.”