Every Olympics brings something new. At Beijing 2022, women’s monobob and freestyle skiing’s big air joined the program. PyeongChang 2018 introduced big air snowboarding and mixed doubles curling.
Now, for the Milano Cortina 2026 Winter Games, ski mountaineering, often referred to as skimo, will make its Olympic debut.
Once a niche pursuit for alpine athletes, ski mountaineering’s inclusion reflects the International Olympic Committee’s push toward faster, more dynamic disciplines that align with how people are engaging with sport today. The events will unfold in the Italian Alps, where early patrol races and mountain crossings helped define the sport nearly a century ago. In that sense, skimo’s Olympic arrival is less a beginning than a return.
WHAT EXACTLY IS OLYMPIC SKI MOUNTAINEERING?
Picture sprinting straight uphill on a steep mountain face, over and over, except you are doing it on skis. The vertical gain is short, but brutally intense. Athletes drive upward on lightweight skis fitted with climbing skins that grip the snow, preventing them from sliding backward as the slope steepens. There are no chairlifts and no pauses. The climb is the race.
That relentless effort reflects the sport’s origins in the Alps, where skis were first used not for competition but for survival, allowing hunters, mountain guides, and soldiers to move efficiently through winter mountains when deep snow made roads impassable. During World War I, alpine military patrols relied on skis to transport troops, supplies, and communications across high-altitude terrain. This mode of transportation continued into World War II and later shaped early patrol races.
“Compared to maybe like Nordic skiing, it would be like a Nordic ski race entirely uphill,” said Kylee Toth, a Canadian ski mountaineering athlete and the acting high-performance director with SkiMo Canada. “There’s almost no break in terms of terrain.”
Along the course, athletes encounter technical sections where skis come off, clip onto backpacks, and boots hit the snow as competitors scramble upward on foot. These rapid transitions are brief, but hugely important. (More on transitions later.)
“I’ve heard people say that it’s certainly one of the most punishing sports out there,” Toth said. “It takes a huge engine and a massive pain tolerance. If you’ve ever done a wind sprint or a hill sprint uphill, just imagine that for five minutes. That’s the sport. It’s savage.”
At the top, the effort flips again, shifting from a sustained uphill grind to explosive downhill speed. Skins are ripped from the bases of skis mid-motion, gear is reset on the fly, and athletes drop into a fast, technical descent through gates. The finish often looks less like a traditional ski race and more like a chaotic mix of downhill skiing, running in ski boots, and an all-out sprint to the line.
At the Olympics, three medal events will be contested: the men’s sprint, women’s sprint, and mixed relay. And yes, the events are fast. Sprint races last just minutes, while the mixed relay is built from a series of back-to-back sprint efforts stretched over roughly half an hour.
THE ROOTS OF SKI MOUNTAINEERING
Ski mountaineering’s story begins long before it was a sport. For centuries, skis were tools of survival and travel, used to move across deep winter snow for hunting, trade, and exploration. By the late 1800s, that practical tradition reached the European Alps, where mountaineers in Switzerland, France, Italy, and Austria began using skis to access high passes and winter peaks.
In the early 1900s, those alpine crossings evolved into organized patrol-style races. Military units in Italy and Switzerland competed across entire valleys, often carrying rifles and heavy packs as part of winter training. These early contests helped inspire iconic events like Italy’s Trofeo Mezzalama, first held in 1933 in the Aosta Valley, which still sends teams across glaciers above 3,000 metres today.
Through the mid-20th century, races across the Alps cemented ski mountaineering’s identity as both an endurance test and an expression of alpine heritage. The sport took a major institutional step forward in 2008 with the creation of the International Ski Mountaineering Federation, and its Olympic potential became clear when skimo appeared at the 2020 Youth Olympic Games in Lausanne.
“They have a very long history of the sport in Europe,” Toth said. “That’s why they’re more dominant, similar to other Nordic sports.”
SKIMO IN CANADA
In Canada, ski mountaineering took root decades later, long after the sport had been formalized in Europe. In the early 2000s, the International Ski Mountaineering Federation approached the Alpine Club of Canada (ACC) to field a team for World Cup races in Europe, marking some of the first Canadian forays into international competition. Those early efforts were grassroots in nature and helped lay the foundation for the sport’s domestic growth.
Over time, these grassroots races spread through mountain towns and ski communities, drawing endurance athletes, mountain guides, and recreational skiers intrigued by the idea of climbing for their turns. What began as informal meetups gradually grew into a structured competitive network.
Those efforts eventually led to the creation of Ski Mountaineering Competition Canada, which now oversees the sport’s national pathway. Today, races like Castle Mountain Skimo, the Fernie Lizard Range Race, and North Star Skimo at Kimberley Alpine Resort are fixtures of the winter calendar, connecting Canadian athletes to the international circuit.
FROM MOUNTAIN TRADITION TO OLYMPIC FORMAT
SPRINTS
The sprint is ski mountaineering’s signature race. It is short, explosive, and tactical, lasting about 2.5 to 3.5 minutes. Athletes race head-to-head in heats of six, climbing roughly 70 vertical metres over a compact course.
Midway through the race, athletes hit a boot-pack section, snapping skis, loading them into their backpacks, and scrambling upward on foot. At the top, they rip away the climbing skins (thin, grippy strips attached to the base of each ski for traction on the ascent), reset their bindings, and drop into a fast, technical descent through gates.
MIXED RELAY
The mixed relay brings ski mountaineering into a team setting designed for spectators. Each country enters one man and one woman, who alternate four short laps in a woman–man–woman–man sequence.
Every lap mirrors the sprint format, blending uphill climbing, lightning-fast transitions, and aggressive descents. Athletes tag their teammate inside a designated relay zone, similar to a 4×100 or 4×400 track relay, except instead of passing a baton, they physically hand off the race.
While the mixed relay runs longer than the sprint, about 25 to 35 minutes total, the intensity never drops. It is essentially a chain of back-to-back sprint efforts.
TRANSITIONS: THE RACE WITHIN THE RACE
Transitions are the rapid gear changes that happen mid-race, often in just a few seconds. Athletes must switch from skiing to running and back again.
The challenge is executing the skilled transition while, in Toth’s words, “redlined” (an informal term used to describe an athlete pushing their physical limits to the absolute maximum.) “We will have just done a super hard sprint, and then you need to execute a skill,” Toth said. She compared it to “trying to run an 800 on the track and then put together a puzzle.”
Toth likens them to transitions in other high-pressure sports, such as a biathlete shifting from skiing to shooting, a triathlete moving from bike to run, or a Formula 1 pit stop. In skimo, those critical seconds between movements can make or break the race.
HOW TO WIN
Winning is straightforward: races are timed to the hundredth of a second, with heats determining advancement and cumulative rankings.
In the sprint, athletes race head-to-head through a series of knockout heats, with the fastest finishers advancing until one winner remains.
In the mixed relay, teams race against the clock as partners alternate laps in a true tag-team format. The fastest combined time between both racers determines the final standings.
WHEN TO WATCH
Ski-mountaineering at Milano Cortina 2026 will take place at Stelvio Ski Centre (Bormio, Lombardy). As currently scheduled, the men’s and women’s sprints are set for 19 February, followed by the mixed relay on 21 February 2026.
HOW DO ATHLETES TRAIN FOR SKIMO?
Ski mountaineering may be a winter sport, but athletes are largely built in the summer. Toth described the off-season as a period of “base building,” focused on aerobic endurance through trail running, mountain biking, and roller skiing.
The sprint format also demands power, which she explained athletes develop through strength and conditioning work in the gym.
“I think we train quite similarly to Nordic skiing,” Toth said, “with the exception of almost all of our work being uphill.”
At the highest levels, training becomes even more specific. Toth added that more developed national programs try to spend as much time on snow as possible year-round, often travelling to camps in places like France, Italy, or South America to maintain ski fitness and train at altitude.
TEAM CANADA AND OLYMPIC QUALIFICATION
In December 2025, Canada’s attempt to qualify a ski mountaineering mixed relay team for the Milano Cortina 2026 Winter Games ended at a North American continental qualification event in Solitude, Utah. Canadian athletes Emma Cook-Clarke and Germany Hösch were narrowly edged out by Anna Gibson and Cameron Smith of the United States, who secured the region’s lone Olympic relay quota.
With only one mixed relay spot allocated to North America, Canada will not field a relay team at the sport’s Olympic debut.
A LIFELONG SPORT
For Toth, what sets ski mountaineering apart goes beyond medals or Olympic inclusion.
“I think the thing I really like about this sport, and why kids and juniors should get into it, is that it’s not something you only do for a certain time in your life,” she said. “There’s a lifestyle component to it.”
As she prepares to step away from elite competition, Toth said she has no intention of leaving the sport behind.
“I’m retiring, and then tomorrow I’m going to go out on my gear,” she said. “You take away the high-end competitive piece, and it’s still a lifelong passion. That’s something you can say about some sports, but not all. I think that’s what makes ours unique.”