This week, for the first time at the Olympics, skiers will ski down the hill wearing carpet-like skins on their skis or hard boots, then back down on unprepared terrain.
This is skiing – or skimo – a new Olympic event. It is brutal sport at its best.
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“I think they are players with a very high pain threshold and can really suffer,” Dr. Volker Schöffl, doctor of the German team of mountain climbers, in an interview. “They run, they run and you know, little by little everyone dies around you until one man stops and finishes first.”
Three skimo events will be held in Bormio, Italy, from Thursday: a men’s sprint, a women’s sprint and a mixed race against a person of the same sex. The United States will compete in relays but not runners.
Sprint events last about three minutes, while the medley relay usually lasts a little over half an hour. The relay starts with the skins off stage – essentially running uphill with free heel and climbing skins attached to skis. Athletes then rip off skins and ski a short downhill section before returning to the ascent, this time with a combination of skinning and bootpacking (running uphill in their ski boots, with the snowpack secured in a bag). Finally, they went down the hill.
The sprint course is about half the length of the relay, where one lap is 1,500 meters, or about a mile. The relay pairs complete four laps, with the women taking the first leg and the team members taking turns from there. Eighteen relay teams will compete.
“It’s really the distance that pushes the body to its physical capacity – so you can push as hard as you can but not go over that edge,” said Sarah Cookler, head of sports for the US Ski Mountaineering Association.
It is also necessary to focus on transitioning between walking paths properly while running.
“If you’ve pushed your body into this critical position where your hands are cramped and you’re seeing through the tunnel, it makes it very difficult to steer and do all those special motor skills … let alone have the ability to run on the ground,” Cookler said.
During the runners’ descent, spectators are less likely to see good or powerful turns because competitors use featherweight gear that offers less control.
“You might look at these skiers and be like, ‘Oh, my God, they can’t ski,'” Cookler said, adding that some athletes take a lean stance that few Alpine ski instructors recommend. “It’s because of the gear.”
Although skimo is new to modern audiences, it hearkens back to the early days of skiing, when ancient travelers tied their feet to two wooden planks and sometimes used animal skins to get a better grip while climbing.
Skimo is a truly classic sport. “Like Nordic skiing, it started when mountain people just needed an efficient way to get around,” said Christina Volken, a former USA Skimo competitor who lives in Washington.
In fact, skiing predates the wheel. The oldest pieces of skis date back to 6700 BC There is also evidence that ancient skiers used climbing skins – animal skins attached to the bottom of the skis – to go uphill.
In the context of the Olympics, this game is similar to the military patrol event that was held in the 1924 games in Chamonix, the first Winter Olympics. That four-man ski race is considered a precursor to both biathlon and cross-country skiing: Competitors cross about 20 miles of alpine terrain, with a target shooting round at the end.
Representing the US in the skimo relay are Anna Gibson and Cam Smith. Smith, a skimo racing veteran, has been competing for about a decade, while Gibson is new to the sport. A professional runner, Gibson ran in college and grew up skiing in Jackson Hole, Wyoming.
The US has been playing catchup in skimo against other mountainous European countries. While backcountry skiing became popular in the US, skimo racing caught on later.
“It was this kind of low-key thing, where people were volunteering to train,” Volken said. “We didn’t have any money yet.”
Ahead of the Olympics – and on the wing of a donation from tech entrepreneur Michael Paulus – USA Skimo hired Cookler and an Italian coach with experience in World Cup skimo races.
“It was a last ditch effort to get there, but we’ve made a lot of progress since last year,” Cookler said. “Being able to go to the Olympics was the No. 1 goal.”
There is more to skimo than the Olympics will show, however. The organizers chose to include some of the shortest, safest and most accessible sports.
In contrast, in long endurance races such as the Patrouille Des Glaciers, teams of three travel about 35 miles over steep, difficult terrain, often climbing glaciers. Competitors carry gear such as avalanche transceivers, crampons, ice axes and climbing ropes. Olympic runners, however, will not have much in their bags – just balloons or inflated jackets to give the bag enough structure to carry skis.
Cookler said he hopes this year’s events will be exciting enough that future Winter Games organizers will add longer skimo races with more technical upgrades.
“This is just a foot in the door,” he said.
