The sport of ski mountaineering made its long-awaited Olympics debut Thursday and crowned its first champion — and there’s still more to come.
So who won the first medals of the brand new Olympic sport, also known as “skimo,” and what’s still to come?
Here’s what to know:
What is ‘skimo’?
Ski mountaineering, which is called “skimo” for short, was voted into the Olympic program in 2021. It’s a niche Alpine sport that traces its roots back to the late 19th century.
The 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.
Who won the first medals?
Marianne Fatton of Switzerland was the first Olympic medalist for the new sport.
With snow falling, Fatton navigated the uphill-then-downhill sprint course lined with a diamond-shaped pattern and stairs in a lung-searing time of 2 minutes, 59.77 seconds. She edged Emily Harrop of France by 2.38 seconds. Ana Alonso Rodriguez of Spain took bronze as she competed on a torn ACL.
In the men’s sprint race, Oriol Cardona Coll of Spain cruised to the win. Nikita Filippov finished with the silver, becoming the first individual neutral athlete to earn a medal in Italy. Thibault Anselmet of France captured bronze.
This particular gold medal carried a lot of weight given the stakes. Fatton claims the coveted title of “first ever” to earn an Olympic title in their sport. Cardona Coll wasn’t far behind as the men’s race was staged 20 minutes later.
Just being in front of the crowd was a special moment for skimo athletes.
“Standing in the start and seeing the Olympic rings on the hillside got really real,” said American Anna Gibson, who made it to the semifinal round.
It’s been a tough road for Alonso Rodriguez just to get to the start line. In September, she was seriously hurt when hit by a car while training on her bike. “There were times when I thought I was not going to make it,” she said. “I’ve focused on taking it step-by-step.”
What’s next?
The final skimo event is a mixed team relay on Saturday.
The U.S. has strong team in the mixed relay in Anna Gibson and Cameron Smith, who recently won a World Cup event and made it to the semifinals in Thursday’s men’s sprint debut.
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 to watch
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.
WATCH LIVE: Ski mountaineering mixed team relay
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