Olympic viewers who think they've seen it all are about to meet "skimo." For the first time since skeleton returned in 2002, the Winter Games are adding a brand-new sport: ski mountaineering. The discipline—popularly shortened to skimo—will debut with three medal events: men's sprint, women's sprint, and a mixed relay. Athletes climb a mountain using removable "skins" on their skis, sometimes hiking on foot for steeper sections, then race back down on a set course of rugged terrain; check out some skimo training here, per USA Today. The mixed relay pairs one man and one woman who alternate four laps on a longer, higher-elevation-gain route than the sprints, per NPR.
Though its roots stretch back to practical winter travel in the Alps in the late 1800s, modern skimo didn't organize as a high-level sport until this century, with its first world championships in 2002 and a World Cup run soon after. It made a showing at the 2020 Winter Youth Olympic Games, now landing in Italy for a full Olympic debut at Milan Cortina, with races held in Bormio's Valtellina Valley. Team USA barely made the cut in a last-chance qualifier in Utah, where Anna Gibson and Cam Smith's mixed-relay win over Canada locked in North America's final Olympic berth.
Besides the three skimo competitions, there are five more new medal events. Dual moguls joins freestyle skiing, with runs for both men and women. Sliding sports expand with women's doubles luge—formalizing men's doubles as a separate event—and a mixed-team skeleton race combining one male and one female slider. Ski jumping adds a women's individual large-hill event, while the men's traditional four-person team event is replaced by a "super team" format featuring two-jumper teams, a change organizers say could open the field to more nations. More here on the new entries from NBC's Olympics portal.
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