Ski mountaineering and other events : NPR

Athletes compete in the men’s sprint race during the Ski Mountaineering World Cup in Bormio, Italy, in February 2025, a year before the sport makes its debut at the Winter Olympics.

Antonio Calanni/AP

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Antonio Calanni/AP

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These Winter Olympics will feature a new sport for the first time in more than three decades.

Although the Games regularly add events within existing disciplines, they have not introduced an entirely new sport since skeleton’s return in 2002.

That changes this year with the debut of ski mountaineering, aka “skimo”.

This sport, which involves climbing and descending a mountain on skis, will consist of three events: the women’s sprint, the men’s sprint and the mixed relay.

This is in addition to five new competitions in long-standing Winter Olympic sports, for a total of eight new medal opportunities at this year’s Games. Here’s what you need to know about them.

The new sport: ski mountaineering

In ski mountaineering, athletes travel a defined route through rugged terrain. They attach climbing skins to the base of their skis as they ascend a mountain, quickly remove their skis to navigate a series of steps on foot, then readjust and ski back down.

The sprint race consists of an uphill and downhill run, starting with time trials and splitting athletes into groups of six. In the mixed relay, teams made up of a man and a woman alternate four laps — two uphills and two downhills — on a longer course (with an elevation gain of 460 feet compared to 230 in the sprint).

According to the American team, ski mountaineering has its roots in the “need to travel the snowy landscapes of Europe in prehistoric times” and officially dates back to the mountains of Switzerland in 1897.

But the sport known as skimo has truly taken off in the 21st century, hosting its first world championships in France in 2002 and establishing a World Cup circuit two years later.

It was added to the Winter Youth Olympic Games in 2020, and the following year its inclusion in Milan Cortina was approved – a fitting country for its Olympic debut, as the sport has a long history and many international champions in Italy.

The ski mountaineering competitions will take place in Bormio, in Valtellina, in the same location as the alpine skiing.

The U.S. team narrowly qualified for the Games in a high-stakes race in Utah in early December, the very last chance for teams to earn points in the Olympic rankings.

The mixed relay team of Anna Gibson and Cam Smith won their race by a minute and a half on the local snow, beating rival Canada to win a gold medal and secure the U.S. team’s final berth on the continent at the Olympics. It was not only a major victory, but a chance for Team USA to educate curious Instagram followers about the sport itself.

New events in skeleton, luge, ski jumping and moguls

The other new events are additional variations of existing competitions, giving more athletes, particularly women, a chance to compete:

There is duplicate bumpsa freestyle skiing event in which two athletes compete side by side, performing aerial tricks over two jumps on a bumpy course. Traditional moguls, featuring one skier at a time, have been a part of the Winter Games since the 1990s. This year, both men’s and women’s dual mogul events will be featured.

Another new event is mixed team skeletonwhich brings together a man and a woman from the same country to race headfirst down an ice slope on a small sled.

This year also marks the beginning of women’s double sledin which two women from the same country double up on the same sled to hurtle down the track, feet first. The existing doubles luge competition will officially become a men’s event, which it has effectively been since the 1960s, since women were technically eligible but had never competed before.

Ski jumping also receives a brand new event, the women’s individual competition on large hill. That means men and women will compete in normal and big hill events, as well as a mixed team event, which debuted at the 2022 Beijing Games.

The men have an additional medal event in ski jumping, which is changing its name this year: the great teama new format that replaces the traditional four-person team competition with pairs of two competing in up to three jumps. Olympic organizers say the restructuring makes the competition more dynamic and opens the way for smaller nations to participate.