The Winter Olympics began on February 6th and ended on February 22nd, with some events beginning as early as February 4th. The Olympics were held in both Milan and Cortina d’Ampezzo, marking the first time two cities have co-hosted the games, according to ESPN. This was the third time Italy has hosted the Winter Olympics, which featured over 116 events from a range of sixteen different disciplines. This year’s Winter Olympics certainly stood out as both eight new events and an entirely new sport were introduced. Skimo, also known as ski mountaineering, is the first ever Winter Olympics sport to be introduced since 2022.
According to Wikipedia, “Competitive ski mountaineering is typically a timed racing event that follows an established trail through challenging winter alpine terrain while passing through a series of checkpoints. Racers climb and descend under their own power using backcountry skiing equipment and techniques,” or in short, ski mountaineering is an activity that combines ski touring, telemark, backcountry skiing, and mountaineering into one sport.
Racers will typically wear or carry their skis while climbing up a hill, depending on the steepness of the hill, and then ski down the entire mountain. There are also two main categories of skis used in skimo: free-heel telemark skis and skis that are based on alpine skis, where the heel of the ski is free for ascents, but more fixed during descent.
Curling has also made a reintroduction to the Winter Olympics, and according to TIME Magazine, curling returned as a medal event after a 74-year-long hiatus. Skimo featured three events alongside its introduction: skimo men’s spring, skimo women’s sprint, and skimo mixed relay, which were all a part of the eight events added in total to this year’s Winter Olympics.
TIME Magazine also noted that each of the three events consisted of 18 athletes, who raced each other in heats of six people. The top three athletes of each heat advanced to the next round, alongside the three fastest athletes overall who did not place. They competed in two semi-finals, and only six athletes advanced to the finals, where Switzerland’s Marianne Fatton won the gold medal for women’s sprint, Spain’s Oriol Cardona Coll won gold for men’s sprint, and both Emily Harrop and Thibault Anselmet from France won the mixed relay event.
Aside from the trio of skimo events, mixed team skeleton, men’s dual moguls, women’s dual moguls, women’s double lunge, and women’s individual large hill ski jumping were all featured as well. Alongside the addition of these events, the Milano Cortina has officially been recognized as the most gender balanced Winter Games in history.
According to the IOC (International Olympic Committee), following the Beijing Winter Olympics, where women represented 44.7% of athletes present at the games, the Milano Cortina continued the progression towards full gender equality. At this year’s Winter Games, 47% of all athlete quota places, the limited number of competitors allocated for each country, were women, the highest percentage ever recorded at the Winter Olympics. Additionally, according to the IOC, of the 116 events that took place, 50 were women’s events, and 12 were mixed events, meaning that women competed in a record breaking 53.4% of all events. This year’s Winter Olympics were both record-breaking and thrilling, setting up excitement for the games to come in 2028.
