Ski mountaineering, or ‘Skimo’, will make its Olympic debut at the Milan-Cortina Games, offering spectators an adrenaline-packed sprint requiring athletes to negotiate uphill climbs on ski and foot before descending by ski.
Bormio’s Stelvio course, where the men’s alpine skiing programme will be staged — and a regular feature on the skiing World Cup circuit — will be the venue for the sole new event at these Olympics.
The equipment varies drastically from that used by regular downhill skiers.
Skimo competitors are equipped with lightweight skis, the underside of which are dressed with ‘skins’ to encourage traction and enable ascents. The skins are peeled off to allow downhill skiing.
The bindings that keep the boots locked onto the ski are also vastly different, clipped out at the heel to allow climbing but then clipped back in for downhill skiing. Athletes also carry a backpack and poles and wear a helmet.
The men’s and women’s sprint races, with a starting altitude of 1,215 metres (3,986 feet), sees athletes climb up to 70 metres on the piste wearing skis with skins, to allow grip.
They reach a point where they are obliged to remove the skis and attach them to their backpack to ascend a steep 10m flight of steps on foot before donning the skis once more for a final climb. Then comes the removal of the skis’ skins, the change in binding settings and a 70m descent on a piste featuring raised banks and steep curves to the finish line.
The mixed relay consists of two ascents plus a section on foot with skis attached to the backpack for each ascent and two descents.
Each race in a knock-out type of competition will last between three and three-and-a-half minutes.
“The course is very good, so it promises to be a great Olympics,” said two-time overall World Cup winner Thibault Anselmet of France.
“There’s everything, some very steep parts, some parts that are a bit flatter, a nice gate, a nice downhill.”
Endurance is key for the thigh-busting ascents, while mental toughness and technical nous are required to master the three transitions from uphill climbing to foot and then to downhill skiing.
Pacing and risk management are then crucial in the final descent when attempts at overtaking competitors becomes a gamble on a course featuring banks more akin to skicross than alpine skiing.
“It’s a race that allows you to push hard until the end,” said Spain’s Bormio World Cup sprint winner Oriol Cardona Coll. “That means there can be many position changes,” he said. “You can get to the top and overtake, or be overtaken. So it really adds a lot of action, this dance of positions.”
Skimo was first introduced at the 2020 Youth Olympic Winter Games in Lausanne and its inclusion in these Milan Games was approved by the International Olympic Committee a year later.