Skeleton racer Tabby Stoecker reveals the impact of opinions she has encountered around race and culture: "It would shock me"

This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine.

As a teenage student at circus school with a flair for flying trapeze, Tabby Stoecker learnt how to handle danger. On the skeleton track in the Dolomite Mountains, those years of training are sure to come in handy. Stoecker will hurtle headfirst down the winding course at speeds of up to 90 miles per hour, her face just centimetres from the ice.

“I’ve had experiences when it hasn’t gone right, and I’ve hit the wall hard, skidded, or flipped on to my back,” says Stoecker, who will be competing at her first Winter Olympics after winning World Cup and European Championship medals. But when it goes to plan, she adds, sliding the corners of the frozen course while experiencing extreme G-force is “an absolute state of flow”.

“You can’t remember what’s happened because you are so present. You’re in tune with your breath, the track and sled. You can feel, see and hear everything but also nothing at all. You’re at one with what you’re doing.”

Stoecker, 25, is the first British woman in more than a decade to win an overall skeleton World Cup medal. Yet just seven years ago, she hadn’t even heard of the sport that she excels in.

That changed in the summer of 2018 when, aged 17, she spotted an advert on Instagram seeking young people who, with support, could become future Olympian or Paralympians across a range of disciplines. At the time, she was living with her mother in London, combining flying trapeze, clowning and juggling alongside her A-levels. She dreamt of joining the entertainment troupe Cirque du Soleil but doubted she would ever make it.

Stoecker’s application to the talent programme was accepted, though her start was far from smooth. “I hadn’t even heard of skeleton when I signed up,” she admits. “I told my mum about the sports in the talent ID. She knew about skeleton – she’d watched Lizzy Yarnold win in Pyeongchang on the telly.

“I was just bad. I was thrown in at the deep end. I didn’t really grow up doing winter sports and I hadn’t considered sports as a career.” She struggled in the gym, despite her background in gymnastics and circus training. “They had me squatting with a stick in the corner while everyone else was doing weights, because my body didn’t know those movements. I had no idea!”

Following the Covid pandemic, she moved to the training programme based in Bath. But Stoecker, who has Nigerian ancestry on her mother’s side, felt alienated. “I wouldn’t say there’s often overt racism, but there’s a lot of people who grew up never seeing other cultures and races. They would come out with opinions that… never against me innately, but it would shock me.

“I didn’t feel like I fitted in but I’m so glad I stuck at it. It took a while for me to believe I had physical qualities that would flower. When things are hard, it’s the worst time to make decisions. You have to push through.”

The lightbulb moment came later in Norway when Stoecker launched on a sled for the first time. “It was the coldest I’ve ever been. As soon as you take off a layer, your extremities start to go solid. The coaches said, ‘Relax, just try to count where you are as you go down.’ I was extremely nervous and couldn’t feel my fingers or toes. You’re so close to the ice, but your brain is taking in all this information. It was addictive, an adrenaline rush. I got to the bottom and was fairly unscathed. I couldn’t believe what I’d done and wanted to go again.”

What followed was years of hard work and dedication. What does she miss? The opportunity to live free of her “athlete brain” for every single decision, she says.

“If I go out for brunch, I might want a massive stack of pancakes but there’s not much protein or colour on my plate. Or before I go to bed, I think I should have this disgusting protein shake as I was on my feet for longer than usual and I don’t want to lose weight overnight. Or there’s sleep hygiene – not looking at your phone an hour before bed, when sometimes you just want to watch a film and then sleep!

“And I miss being able to play with my niece and nephew when they say, ‘We want to race you, Aunty Tabby’, without worrying about injuring myself.”

But, as every athlete knows, it will all count on race day, when victory can come down to a hundredth of a second. A win would “feel like all the sacrifice and hard work I’ve put in, my partner, family and team have put in – it would be the perfect way to give back,” Stoecker says.

“There’s such power that comes with the Olympic Games, and the way it connects everyone. Skeleton doesn’t get that much coverage, but it’s one of the most-watched sports in the Winter Olympics. There will be all these eyes who have not really seen me, what I do or what I stand for before.

“I’d love to be stood on top of the podium, with those eyes on me reflecting this positive image of a young woman who has gone after her dreams, and succeeded, even when she didn’t think they were possible – or even know about those dreams until she was 17.”

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