Katie Tannenbaum was the only athlete heading to the Winter Olympics this year from the US Virgin Islands, and the first they had sent since 2014. She had been fighting to reach the Winter Olympics for some time. In 2018, despite having reached the qualifying standard, the US Virgin Islands were not given a place in the Pyeongchang skeleton competition. An appeal to the court of arbitration for sport failed.
Having finally secured a place for the 2022 Games, once she was in Beijing, 36-year-old Tannenbaum tested positive for Covid and had to go into isolation. Her dream of being flagbearer for the group of Caribbean islands with a population of around 87,000 was over. With their only athlete absent, and their opening ceremony uniforms failing to arrive on time, the US Virgin Islands National Olympic Committee decided they would not attend the opening ceremony at all.
“I had remained tough through the news that I had Covid,” Tannenbaum told the Guardian via email, “but the thought of the Virgin Islands having no representation at the opening ceremonies made me emotional. I insisted that if I couldn’t be there someone had to be.”
So the team improvised uniforms, and got a volunteer to carry the flag. And then just before they entered the arena, in a moment captured for social media, they video-called Tannenbaum so that she could be a part of it. “I was watching excitedly on TV from my isolation room when they called me just as they were about to walk out. My coach told me that this moment was for me, that we wouldn’t be at the Games without me, and thanked me for getting us here. I was in tears.”
Tannenbaum, who started her sliding career in 2011, was freed from Covid isolation in time to compete – but barely had an opportunity to train on the unfamiliar track at the Yanqing National Sliding Centre before race day.
“It all happened so fast,” she said. “I was in isolation for over a week, then the next thing I knew I was on the start line at the Olympic Games. While I was elated to have been able to race, it was also devastating to be competing in the biggest race of my career, with the world watching, less prepared than I had ever been. When race day came I had exactly two options … I could race unprepared or I could not race at all.”
Tannenbaum decided to race, and was eliminated after the third heat, placed last, with a combined time a massive 12.69 seconds off the lead of the eventual gold medal winner Hannah Neise of Germany. “When I consider how close I came to not having any option, to not being able to even be a part of the race, it makes it easier to accept and to choose to be grateful,” she reflects. Despite her last place, Tannenbaum was all smiles at the end of the run, proudly displaying the US Virgin Islands flag.
In any other Olympics there would be a happy ending, and freed from Covid isolation Tannenbaum would at least get her chance to wave the US Virgin Islands flag at the Closing Ceremony on the final day of Beijing. But this isn’t an ordinary Olympics.
“Due to the Beijing Organizing Committee’s Covid-19 policies, athletes have to leave the Games within 48 hours after they finish competing, so I won’t be able to attend the closing ceremonies,” she explains.
The US Virgin Islands haven’t had much luck in recent years at the Winter Olympics. They sent one competitor in 2014, but their only athlete at the 2006 Turin Games was due to compete for the sixth consecutive time in the luge and break her own record as the oldest woman to compete at a Winter Olympics. Instead the 52-year-old Anne Abernathy broke her wrist in a practice run and could not take part.
Is this Tannenbaum’s one and only Olympic experience? Might we see her at Milano Cortina 2026? Would she want to emulate Abernathy? That remains to be seen. “I haven’t put a ton of thought into what my skeleton career will look like four years from now,” she says. “First I am going to enjoy some downtime with friends and family and then make that decision in due time.”
