From learning to fly planes to mastering two sports - Annabel Fisher takes 'complex journey' to Life Time Grand Prix

Fresh off snow-pack from ski racing, Annabel Fisher next prepares for carving new tracks on dirt for a debut in the Life Time Grand Prix on Thursday at Sea Otter Classic Gravel. A winner of The Rift in her first season gravel racing in 2022 and the 2023 overall winner of the 2023 Gravel Earth Series, Fisher next targets consistency in the six-race Grand Prix and "win the series".

She's only raced in the US on one other occasion, taking the start at Unbound Gravel 200 last year after earning third in Australia at Seven, a UCI Gravel World Series event. She said that race "failed" with a DNF, "halfway through I was seeing double and I couldn't breathe, so I called it quits", because of lingering effects from a virus she picked up during her overseas travel.

She went on from failure to fortune on the rest of her gravel campaign in Europe, winning Octopus Gravel, winning the British Gravel Nationals and earning podiums at Gravel Suisse and Alpine Gravel Challenge.

In the off-season, she applied for an invitation to compete in the Life Time Grand Prix series, which provides a cash-heavy prize purse for the top 10 each fall. She already had an overall win at the Gravel Earth Series, so a new challenge was welcome but also a surprise when she was accepted.

"I didn't expect to get picked. So I got the news 'you're in the Grand Prix', I was like, that's great but I can't afford to go, right? So I had a bit of a panic. I hadn't signed a team yet, I was still in negotiations," the 35-year-old Briton told Cyclingnews.

"When I got to the end of my negotiations with my current team, I dropped the bomb shot of Life Time Grand Prix, so we defined a budget for me to go to America. They were quite happy to take that on board, which is just amazing."

After a full season of nordic ski racing, with a focus on events in and around her home in Switzerland, Fisher put down her skis and picked up the bike at the end of March. On her fifth ride of the year, she finished second at the UCI Gravel World Series stop in Portugal, 114 Gravel Race.

"My debut at Life Time [Grand Prix] is going to be a bit of a shock to the system, but I'm really excited to do it. So hopefully my winter has will see me through the first couple races before I actually get my cycling legs back," Fisher said at a pre-Sea Otter virtual press conference.

She said she is a "real geek" with 35 pairs of skis and is completely self-taught in her winter sport about types of wax, applications for different snow and weather conditions and refining her abilities from classic to skate disciplines. This past season, she joined the Team Transju Intersport squad, having only competed in skating races previously, and used this team environment to focus on the longer mass-start nordic ski races, which can be 30km, and compete in the Ski Classic series. 

"I'm a professional athlete. I am not a professional cyclist, not a professional skier, but a professional athlete and I have two sports. My athletic career is absolutely not a year-by-year thing, it's a long, complex journey," Fisher told Cyclingnews.

"I had really, really low points last year for many reasons. I've had bad years before. I've broken every bone in my body, ruptured organs, done all sorts of stuff. It doesn't mean that I'm a failure; it just means that something's happened, and the good stuff will come."

A very complex journey

Fisher may dream big, but you can't say her head is in the clouds. In fact, she has spent a lot of time high in the sky learning to fly airplanes. She spent three-and-a-half years in the military with the Royal Air Force, saying "it was amazing, but I didn't make it to the real big deal". She then enrolled at Cambridge University and received a Sociology degree. 

"Whatever I have done, I've always been very mathematical. Need to know how things function. I wanted to do something completely different. I'm not stupid," Fisher said. 

While at Cambridge, she became interested in racing bikes because of a friend and competed at British road nationals several times. By 2018, she joined a club team and began seeing good results, including fifth at the regional Ilkley Cycle Races in the UK, where Tom Pidcock won the men's category 3/4 division. In 2020, she turned pro with Cogeas-Mettler Pro Cycling, a Swiss-based Continental team (now Roland), and she was all-in, earning the mountains classification to start the year at Dubai Women's Tour and riding strong at Giro dell'Emilia Internazionale for a top 25 finish.

The Geneva, Switzerland area became her home base, and she added nordic ski racing to her agenda.  

"I just remember how miserable I was coming into the cycling season. They told me you have to go ride during winter, go to hot places, do winter mileage. By mid-March, I was sick of riding a bike," she recounted to Cyclingnews.

"Then I decided I'm going to do it my way. So in winter 2021, because I live in the mountains, I decided I'm only skiing. And bloody hell, it works."

Skiing in the winter not only gave her a mental adjustment, but a physical recharge that also has helped her fitness on the bike come spring. Since 2022, the time in the winter months, especially in the mountains of Switzerland, translated to new energy for a career in gravel racing.

But, she still wants to continue as a two-sport athlete. The Olympic Games are in her crosshairs for nordic racing, but fit in the dream category right now. She hoped to complete naturalisation process for Swiss citizenship by 2027.

"It's on my radar. I need to get enough FIS points for my national team to accept me. I would absolutely flippin' love it, but I might have to wait a bit," she said.

Jet lag from travel may be her biggest challenge rather than the transition back to gravel. The new challenges in the Grand Prix were just hours away, and she was ready to make an impact.

"I know I have the capacity to win the series. I'm just worried about all the travel. We race on Thursday, and then Friday, I have to leave because I have to be in France and the ski team training camp. From there, I go straight to Monaco for a UCI Gravel World Series race, then a mountain bike race. It's non-stop," she admitted.

"My objective this year, whether it's UCI gravel, it's Life Time, it's mountain bike, I just want to do a really good job. I want to put in a really good performance. 

"I'm really nervous to go back to Unbound, it's so bloody long," Fisher said. "It's a long, long, long race. It's not boring, I will be ready for it. I will go and do it, but if I don't win, I won't be upset. 

"I'd like to finish really strong in the overall classification at Life Time Grand Prix. I think trying to target individual races that's not really my goal this year. I just want to do a really good job. I really want my manager to be like, 'You did so well, I'm going to extend your contract and increase your salary by tenfold.'"