From the editor: Tabitha Williams is a British skier currently in her third year at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. I first met her in January 2023 when her parents were graciously driving me the thirty minutes or more from downtown Whistler to the World Juniors venue on every single race morning, and have kept in touch since. You can find out more about Tabitha’s background in skiing, and financially support her season, here.
By Tabitha Williams
My name is Tabitha Williams, and I am a London-born U23 skier racing for Team Great Britain. In the U.S., I race for the University of Alaska Fairbanks, or UAF, and have been competing on the RMISA circuit for two seasons. This year, however, I have chosen to redshirt and for a very exciting reason, my World Cup debut season.
The bone-chilling mist rolling off the Trondheimsfjorden and the dangerously icy walking paths were my introduction to Trondheim when I hit the streets of the city’s suburbia for a post–travel day jog in early December. Great Britain, along with a variety of other nations including Japan, France, and Australia, was staying in the Quality Hotel Panorama, a 10-minute bus ride from the race venue of Granåsen. The hotel was also kind of in the middle of nowhere, in a sort of industrial park/shopping mall complex.
However, in true Norwegian fashion, the walking paths and areas to go for a recovery run were plentiful. My travel day had been super smooth and quick (a far cry from what I am usually used to in Alaska and the RMISA circuit), with the direct train from Lillehammer to Trondheim taking about four-and-a-half hours. Many of the British athletes are based in Norway, specifically Lillehammer, which is where I started my journey with the British team four years ago. I have spent so much time there that it is now like a second home to me. This trip up to Trondheim was my first time venturing into northern Norway, which was exciting. I didn’t quite know what to expect.
The hustle and bustle at Granåsen on Friday morning was something I hadn’t experienced before. It was like a World Junior or U23 Championship on steroids: crowds of people hoping to catch a glimpse of Klæbo winning on his home turf, coaches, wax techs, and athletes running all over the place, and the massive Norwegian wax truck in the background just towering over everything.
I met up with some of our team who had just finished the classic sprint qualifier then connected with Rosie Fordham, a teammate at UAF who competes internationally for Team Australia. Together we hit the skiathlon track for some pre-race intervals, a session I do before every distance race. I won’t give away too many of my secrets, but I like to do a threshold interval to start (in this case, we did one lap of the classic portion of the track, so about 3.3km), and then follow that up with some shorter, more intense intervals.
This also happened to be my first classic interval session of the season that was conducted in tracks. Snowfall has been low in Alaska and Norway up to this point in the year, hence the lack of tracksetting.
I felt super fit and super fresh, which was a good sign going into my first World Cup, the 20km skiathlon the next day. After I had soaked up as much of the atmosphere as I could, gotten a feel for the distance courses, faffed around doing ski exchange practice, and snapped a selfie with Kenny K [former UAF teammate, forever friend Kendall Kramer], I got the bus back to the hotel. It was 3 p.m. It was dark.
On the morning of my World Cup debut I woke up at 6 a.m., definitely not having eaten enough at dinner the night before, likely a result of the nerves. Or the fact that they were serving the Norwegian specialty, “Taco Friday,” which isn’t quite my pre-race meal of choice.
I was genuinely starving. I tossed and turned for a few minutes, deciding if I should get out of bed or try to get a few more minutes of rest, but I couldn’t fall back asleep because I was just so damn hungry. So I got myself out of bed and hustled down to breakfast, where I tucked into a plate of eggs, bacon, potatoes, yogurt with granola, and my morning black coffee.
We didn’t start until 1 p.m., so I had a lot of time to sit and think about the race, and that’s when the nerves really kicked in. I genuinely have never been so nervous in my entire life. I didn’t realize just how many things you need to think about for a skiathlon. There are so many logistics for the athletes, wax techs, and coaches. Feeds, spare poles for both disciplines, bib, leg bibs, timing chips, FIS GPS, Archinisis GPS [a form of wearable tech for performance monitoring], ski tests, warming up in both classic and skate. There was just a lot to think about.
The nerves finally settled on the line, where, way back in starting position 63, one of seven U23 starters, surrounded by the athletes I grew up watching on TV, I finally felt a sense of calm.
“It’s just another ski race,” I told myself, “you’ve done hundreds of these. Just ski well, you know how to push in the pain cave, race sensibly, and DON’T fuck up the exchange.”
The gun went off, and I started my first World Cup. The classic leg was difficult, and a lot steeper than the skate leg. My goal was to just hang with a pack for the classic and then break away on the skate, which ended up working for me. I was pulled along in the first half for a while by a group of girls (American, Italian, Japanese, Polish, and German), but lost some time on the final uphill push and the long downhill into the stadium.
Coming into the exchange, I was putting a lot of pressure on myself to do it perfectly and quickly, and the ski changeover was very efficient. I thought the pole changeover was as well. However, after skating away from the exchange zone, I noticed after just one V2 push that my left pole was significantly shorter than my right. I had grabbed the same classic pole I had just put down.
There was nothing I could do, and I was already losing time, so I skied out of the stadium, mainly in V1 to accommodate the shorter pole, while frantically yelling for a new pole. A Polish coach handed me a pole with a biathlon strap at the top of the first climb, and I used that until my wax tech could give me a pole with a velcro strap at the start of lap two. That mistake definitely cost me some time, and I now know to place my poles very far off to the side when I take them off in the exchange. Despite these misadventures the race ended up being a solid start to my World Cup career, with a P.51, less than 20 seconds away from my first World Cup points.
Sunday was an early start, which was a surprisingly nice change from the day before. No sitting around and thinking, just getting up and going. However, disaster promptly struck when I poured out one of my packets of instant oats, and out plopped what looked like some sort of web. I kind of just ignored it and fished it out of my bowl, going off to the hot water dispenser before noticing A LIVE MEALWORM crawling up the edge of my bowl. I dumped the oats and substituted for some yogurt and granola, but I was pretty shaken up by the experience.
As for the race itself, I was significantly less nervous with my first World Cup race out of the way, and I was confident in the course and my fitness level, especially for a 10km skate. But once I was out on course I actually found that it was a lot harder to push during this race than it was the day before.
I am definitely more of a distance skier and prefer the longer races, so once I hit the skate portion of the skiathlon, I had warmed up and was able to pull off a great skate leg. The skate 10km, however, felt harder. My legs were not as fresh, which was to be expected for the second day of racing in a row, and I just didn’t have that kick that I did during the skiathlon.
I was able to get quite a lot of TV time on both the American and British livestreams, though. I was filmed all the way from the last climb into the downhill finish and sprint to the line, and I have definitely re-watched it a handful of times.
Overall, it was the best World Cup debut I could have asked for [maybe notwithstanding the literal mealworm in her porridge wtaf —Ed.]. The results made me excited for what’s to come, with both race results being just outside the top 50 and inside the top 10 for U23. I got my lowest-ever FIS points, which was a massive achievement, AND we even had an official photoshoot, meaning I have a profile photo on FIS. That’s a life goal ticked off right there.
After a quick stop in Scotland for Christmas, I will be heading to the Tour de Ski, which will be the first time Great Britain has women on the start list in seven years. Thank you to everyone who has supported my journey so far — my parents, my coaches, my wax techs and support crew, my sponsors, UAF, Snowsport Scotland, and GB Snowsport. You have all made this World Cup debut dream come true!
