Facing Her Fears, Brittany Chadbourne Finds Comfort And Confidence On Her Sit Ski

Brittany Chadbourne is now able to laugh at the fear she felt as she raced downhill during a Para Nordic skiing competition in Montana toward the end of last season.

A photographer captured the moment of Chadbourne with a terrified expression on her face as she desperately tried to avoid crashing on her sit ski. The fear was so palpable back then that it often brought her to tears.

Chadbourne, 26, said she feels much more confident on the downhill stretches these days. It was evident in the way she darted around a curve and then kept on skiing while training inside an underground ski tunnel in Oberhof, Germany, in early September.

“It’s nice to be able to work through that and see the improvement and the change in the confidence that I’m able to actually go down a hill without feeling like I’m going to injure myself or that I’m going to go completely out of control and fly off the trail,” said Chadbourne, a Utah native. “So, I’m excited to see where that goes with this upcoming season.”

Only two years removed from a climbing accident that left her paralyzed from the belly button down, Chadbourne has quickly picked up cross-country skiing and plans to give the biathlon a try this winter. She hopes to continue to progress in the sport and qualify for the Paralympic Winter Games sometime over the next decade.

“I’ve definitely noticed that my skiing has improved quite a bit. I feel like my poling has gotten a lot better,” Chadbourne said. “I’m actually sitting upright a lot more, and I’m not falling over and the cornering has gotten a lot better. I’m able to figure out different ways that I can lean over without just falling over.”

Chadbourne left Nov. 16 to join a select group of athletes at a training camp that U.S. Paralympics Nordic Skiing hosts every year in Canmore, Alberta. The group includes some of the top American sit skiers, including Paralympic gold medalists Oksana Masters and Kendall Gretsch, as well as several development athletes.

The training camp traditionally marks the start of the Para Nordic skiing season. While in Canmore, Chadbourne has competed in a series of races sanctioned by the International Ski and Snowboard Federation, better known by its acronym FIS. In her two continental cup races, she finished seventh and eighth.

Those races will be among the biggest she’ll enter this season, and even though Chadbourne admitted she was nervous, they were an opportunity to compete in a field with Paralympic champions like Gretsch. Chadbourne will also move closer to getting classified as a sit skier by competing in Alberta.

“I think where I am in the beginning, it’s nice to just get the experience,” Chadbourne said. “So, I’m hoping to get as much experience as possible (this season). In Canmore, I’m doing my first 10K race, so I’ve never done that before. I have no idea how to pace myself for that, but the best way to get the experience is to race it.”

Chadbourne said she was still getting accustomed to her “new body” when she got started in Para Nordic skiing not long after her climbing accident in November of 2022. She admitted her body didn’t work in the same way that it had before her accident, causing her to get frustrated and feel unstable in her sit ski.

“I was constantly falling over, and I would get frustrated because I couldn’t get up on my own either,” Chadbourne said. “And with the training has also come with a quite a bit of confidence, and I’ve started to learn how to use my body. The different techniques with skiing have kind of played into that as well, so it’s translated well into just being a better wheelchair user as well.”

In September, Chadbourne was among a small group of skiers who spent a week training at a ski tunnel in Oberhof. It was her first time traveling to Europe and her first time training inside a ski tunnel, where she was able to get some much-needed time on snow this offseason.

While there, Chadbourne had the opportunity to test out the sit ski of her friend, 2022 Paralympian Erin Martin. Chadbourne said she was surprised at how much easier it was to turn in Martin’s lighter sit ski.

To prepare for this season, Chadbourne said she’s made adjustments to her own sit ski in the hopes of finding the right fit for her — one that allows her to be more efficient without getting too tired while racing.

“It’s been a lot of trial and error with that,” she said, “and it’s been really interesting to see what works and what doesn’t.”

Chadbourne, meanwhile, recently went climbing with a group of friends in Maple Canyon in Utah. Her life centered around climbing before her accident, and as someone who enjoys a good challenge, she appreciated the chance to climb a rock again.

It was another challenge for her to conquer.

“With climbing, that was something that I was really nervous about doing. I was nervous that I was going to hate it, and I did it anyways and I had fun,” Chadbourne said. “With skiing, even when I’m terrified of going down the downhills or worried that I’m going to injure myself, when I push through that fear, it feels really good and gives me the confidence that I can do it next time and that I can keep doing harder things and keep challenging myself.”

Alex Abrams has written about Olympic and Paralympic sports for more than 15 years, including as a reporter for major newspapers in Florida, Arkansas and Oklahoma. He is a freelance contributor to USParaNordic.org on behalf of Red Line Editorial, Inc.