Brittany Chadbourne was unsure of what to expect when she traveled to Europe for the first time in early September to train inside an underground ski tunnel.

Chadbourne had never been inside a ski tunnel before she joined six other American sit and standing skiers for a weeklong training camp in Oberhof, Germany.

She had heard that the manmade snow inside the tunnel could be icy and not great for skiing, but at least it would give her an opportunity to get in some much-needed training this offseason. The artificial conditions allowed the group to ski every morning regardless of what the weather was like outdoors.

“And as soon as I got in there, I actually really loved the snow,” Chadbourne, a sit skier from Syracuse, Utah, said. “I think that it was really nice quality, and it was really nice to have the same conditions every day, especially since I’m pretty new to skiing.

“It was nice to actually have consistent conditions to try different techniques and actually know what’s working rather than (thinking), ‘Oh, is it the snow that’s making me ski a little different?’”

The small group of skiers who trained in Oberhof from Sept. 3-9 was made up mostly of development athletes who are looking to improve in the hopes of someday qualifying for the Paralympic Winter Games.

Erin Martin, who made her Paralympic debut in Beijing in 2022, was the most accomplished skier in the group. This wasn’t her first time training inside a ski tunnel, but for Chadbourne and the other athletes, this was a new and exciting experience for them.

The athletes, accompanied by several U.S. Paralympics Nordic Skiing coaches and staff members, headed to the tunnel every morning after breakfast. They were on snow by 10 a.m., and they then spent the next two hours working on drills and doing loops around the ski tunnel.

After lunch, the skiers would either do strength training at a gym or return to the ski tunnel to get in more time on snow.

“One of the cool things with this ski tunnel is that when you come in on the upper level, there’s a bunch of windows where you can actually see down onto the ski tunnel. The look on everyone’s faces was amazing,” said Gary Colliander, associate director of high performance for U.S. Paralympics Nordic Skiing. “They were so stoked when we arrived on the first day to go skiing. Just their faces lit up.

“The smiles were just huge, and the energy was just through the roof. It was awesome. It was training camp, but they were excited to get on snow and spend some time together on snow and in camp.”

It has become common for American Para Nordic skiers to spend part of their offseason training inside a European ski tunnel. In July, Paralympic gold medalists Jake Adicoff and Sydney Peterson participated in a training camp hosted by U.S. Paralympics Nordic Skiing at a ski tunnel in Torsby, Sweden.

Colliander said the focus of the training camp in Oberhof was to provide the group of development athletes, which included several teenagers, with an opportunity to bond and get more one-on-one coaching.

They were able to get in some racing and work on their maneuvering — something a sit skier like Chadbourne can’t do as effectively while training on dryland in the offseason.

“I think all the athletes got a lot out of it, but I would imagine for her just spending more time (on snow) and having a little bit better coach-to-athlete ratio where she’s able to get a little bit more one-on-one support (was beneficial),” Colliander said. “I think she was able to make some really big strides in the six or so days that we were on snow.”

Last January, Chadbourne competed in her first-ever Para Nordic race — a 5-kilometer race at the U.S. Cross Country Ski Championships in Midway, Utah, located a little more than an hour from her home in Syracuse. She also raced at several smaller events.

Since Para Nordic skiers from several countries were training at the same time in Oberhof, the German team organized races for all the athletes inside the ski tunnel.

It marked Chadbourne’s first time racing against athletes from outside the United States. The races gave her a chance to see how much progress she has made over the past year, as well as compete in the same field as Anja Wicker, a Paralympic gold medalist from Germany.

“She’s such a great skier, and it’s so much fun to meet her,” Chadbourne said. “I definitely wasn’t really racing against her, but it’s fun to race with her.”

Chadbourne said there is a large hill inside the ski tunnel that she consistently struggled to climb in practice and would need to pause halfway up it. When she learned that the hill would be included in the course for her sprint race, she admitted she considered not taking part in it.

“I wasn’t feeling very good about it, and I was wondering if it would be better if I only did the 5K race,” Chadbourne said. “But I had a goal that I was just going to go and I was going to do it, and all I wanted to do is get up that hill without stopping and finish the race. I did it, and not just once but twice because there’s the semifinal heat and then the final for the sprint.

“So, I was pretty proud of myself for being able to make it up the hill.”

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.

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