Trail Runners Dominate Olympic Skimo
Trail runners represented the front of the field in the mixed relay ski mountaineering event at the 2026 Milano-Cortina Olympic Games. Athletes from the trail running world were integral to the top four teams, highlighting the crossover of endurance and mountain skills between sports. The performance demonstrates how trail running fitness translates directly to Olympic-level ski mountaineering competition.
- The gold medal was won by France's Emily Harrop, who has a background in skyrunning, and Thibault Anselmet. They were followed by Switzerland (Marianne Fatton, Jon Kistler) and Spain (Ana Alonso Rodriguez, Oriol Cardona Coll), with the United States team of Anna Gibson and Cameron Smith finishing fourth. - Ski mountaineering, or "skimo," made its historic Olympic debut at the Milano-Cortina 2026 Games, with the mixed relay being one of three events alongside the men's and women's individual sprints. - Spain's bronze medalist, Oriol Cardona Coll, also won the first-ever Olympic gold medal in the men's ski mountaineering sprint event earlier in the Games. - The American team featured Cam Smith, a 13-time U.S. skimo national champion, and Anna Gibson, a world-class trail runner who had only competed in a few skimo races prior to the Olympics. - The mixed relay event consists of two-person teams (one man, one woman) with each member completing two laps of a course that includes two ascents and two descents. - The crossover between the sports extends beyond the top teams; Team Poland included trail runner Iwona Januszyk, and Team Australia featured Lara Hamilton, who represented her country at the 2025 World Mountain Running Championships. - The physiological overlap is significant, as the aerobic endurance and leg strength developed in mountain running are directly applicable to the uphill portions of skimo, which many elite runners use for low-impact winter cross-training. - The mixed relay format is a relatively recent addition to the sport, having been added to the International Ski Mountaineering Federation (ISMF) World Cup calendar in 2022 after its Olympic inclusion was announced.
