The sport of ski mountaineering made its long-awaited Olympics debut and a bearded Illinois athlete is making headlines for his performance in the event.
Cam Smith, who first competed in “skimo” during the men’s sprint Thursday, fell just shy of a medal during the mixed team relay Saturday, but his performance was nothing short of incredible.
He and his American teammate Anna Gibson managed to stay in medal contention until the final moments, when they finished fourth by a narrow margin. Smith’s family cheered them on, all while wearing red bears of their own in support of Smith.
The duo entered the race considered dark horses to medal and they proved they could be just that, well out-racing their ranks.
Emily Harrop and Thibault Anselmet combined to win gold, beating the Swiss team of Marianne Fatton and Jon Kistler by 11.86 seconds. Spanish racers Ana Alonso Rodriguez and Oriol Cardona Coll captured the bronze.
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.
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.
The mixed team race was a different course setup than the sprint race, with an extra ascent and descent adding to the lung-searing challenge. The mixed teams alternated between female and male racers over four laps. The course length was listed as 4,626 feet with the total ascent around 450 feet.
The racers started on an ascent before a descent into the transition zone. They put on their “skins” — a piece of fabric on the bottom of the skis for better uphill traction — before navigating a diamond-shaped pattern that led them to a set of stairs. They stowed their skis on their backs and ran up the steps in ski boots. Then they put their skis back on and scaled another uphill climb before taking the skins off again and flying downhill.
Once they reached the “handover” zone, they tagged their partner to begin another lap.
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.
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