The newest sport at the Winter Olympics will make its debut Thursday. It’s called ski mountaineering, or “skimo” for short.
And an Illinois athlete will be among the first Olympic competitors in the event.
So how does it work exactly?
What is “ski mountaineering”?
It’s basic principles are simple: race up the slope and back down as fast as possible.
But there’s so much more nuance to skimo.
Ski mountaineering became fashionable before the arrival of mechanical lifts when the only way to go up was by climbing. And the best way to get back down was, of course, skiing.
There are a range of skimo categories that blend a combination of endurance, technique, speed and Alpine ability. For the Milan Cortina Games, the focus will be on just the individual sprint and the mixed team relay. The men’s and women’s sprint competitions are Thursday in Bormio with the mixed relay two days later.
How does it work?
The individual sprint features a bracketed-style setup. The top finishers keep advancing until they reach the final, which will consist of six athletes.
The course is composed of an ascent on skis with an assist of “skins,” which are pieces of fabric that allow athletes to hurry uphill but prevent sliding backward. After going through a diamond-shaped pattern, there’s a running section in boots with the skis on their backs and then another uphill section on skis. From there, the athletes remove the skins and ski down.
A typical individual race lasts about three minutes. The total ascent is roughly 76 yards and the course length about 0.48 miles.
In the mixed team race, each athlete completes two laps of the course, one after the other. The final takes about 30 minutes. The ascent on that course is about 148 yards and the length around 0.9 miles.
Athletes can be called for penalties, ranging from unsportsmanlike conduct to technical errors to missing equipment. It can result in adding three to 30 seconds to their time or even a disqualification. For instance, incorrect storage of the skins is a 3-second addition while losing the skin before the finish line is a 30-second penalty. Failing to correctly fasten skis on a backpack is a 3-second infraction.
How many athletes are competing?
There will be 36 racers (18 males, 18 females) competing for the medals. Of the total, 35 are making their Olympics debuts; Phillip Bellingham of Australia competed in cross-country skiing at three Winter Games.
The International Ski Mountaineering Federation (ISMF) oversees the sport with approximately 56 national federations, ranging from Europe to the Americas to Asia to Oceania and to Africa. The sport has seen a 45% increase since it was approved for the Olympics in 2021. There are approximately 3 million ski mountaineers around the global, according to ISMF.
The sport has been proposed for the 2030 Winter Games in the French Alps.
Who are the favorites?
It’s so wide open.
Among the female athletes to watch are Emily Harrop of France and Swiss athlete Marianne Fatton, who won the women’s sprint event at the skimo world championships last March.
On the men’s side, it’s Oriol Cardona Coll of Spain, Thibault Anselmet of France and Jon Kistler of Switzerland. The U.S. has strong team in the mixed relay in Anna Gibson and Cameron Smith, who recently won a World Cup event.
Smith, 30, was born and raised in Rockford, Illinois, and has been competing in ski mountaineering events for more than a decade.
He punched his ticket to the debut edition of the ski mountaineering event when he and Gibson won a gold medal in the opening World Cup race in early December.
He has two top-10 finishes in men’s team events at the World Championships, including in 2025, and his best individual finish at Worlds was a 22nd-place finish last year.
When will the events take place?
The men’s and women’s individual sprint events will take place on Thursday, with the first heats beginning at 2:55 a.m. CT with the women’s event. The men will compete beginning at 3:30 a.m.
You can watch that live here:
Watch: Ski Mountaineering Makes Its Debut
The semifinal round takes place just before 6 a.m., and the finals will get underway around 7 a.m.
The mixed relay will conclude the competition on Saturday at 6:30 a.m. CT. Teams of one man and one woman will compete, with the competitors on each squad completing the course twice.
Smith will compete with Gibson in the mixed relay.
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