By Harry Mottram: Inaugurated into the Team Bath’s Hall of Fame for Sport athlete and Olympic gold medallist, Tabby Stoecker is joining the celebrity cast of Strictly Come Dancing in September 2026. Londoner Tabby Stoecker, at the age of 25, became the youngest-ever Hall of Fame inductee after winning a historic gold medal for Team GB in the new mixed team skeleton event with Matt Weston at the Milano-Cortina 2026 Winter Games following a training regime in Bath at the University’s outdoor 140m push-start track. Track is the only one of its type in the UK and it enables Britain’s bobsleigh and skeleton athletes to hone their starts away from the ice. The duo won gold in the inaugural mixed skeleton this year at the Winter Olympics in Italy – a sport in which the couple slid down the bobsleigh track on a small sled, known as a skeleton bobsled down a frozen track at high speed while lying face down and head-first. It is called a skeleton as it resembles a rib cage in shape.
Team Bath said of Tabby’s inclusion in the Hall of Fame: “It continued a meteoric rise for the former circus skills performer, who only made her senior international debut in late 2023 but has already won two World Championship silver medals and enjoyed Overall World Cup podium places in both the women’s and mixed team events in 2026.”
Now Tabby is taking part in Strictly Come Dancing. Tabby Stoecker said: “I am over the moon to be joining the cast of Strictly 2026. I’ve had the wildest year of my life so far, so to be rounding it off with a childhood dream of dancing in the Strictly ballroom is surreal and I can’t wait to get stuck in!”
Tabby Stoecker joins Lacey Turner, Dani Dyer, Delta Goodrem, Chris Appleton, Cach Mercer, Will Best, Dame Sarah Storey, Jaime Winstone, Bethany Antonia, Shaun Wright-Phillips, Graeme Hall and Lawrence Robb in the 2026 Strictly Come Dancing line-up. And she has a tough act to follow in that the last dancer with a Bath connection won the competition. In 2020, Bill Bailey, 55, who went to school in Bath wowed the judges and the public with his professional partner Oti Mabuse. And Joe Sugg from Lacock – not too far away from Bath – was a runner up in 2018 with his dance partner Dianne Buswell.
When Tabby said this has been a ‘wild year’ she’s not joking as she is also lined up for another BBC series – this time as a Gladiator called Goldstar – the programme is scheduled to return in January 2027. Strictly Come Dancing begins in September with new hosts Emma Willis, professional dancer Johannes Radebe and comedian Josh Widdicombe.
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Bath Voice Monthly Newspaper is distributed free to thousands of homes and some supermarkets – distributed from the first of the month. Harry Mottram is the News Editor
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