In December 2014, a few months after he enrolled at a small liberal arts college in the Rocky Mountains, Cam Smith decided to give the sport of ski mountaineering a try.
He purchased some cheap gear, drove to a nearby ski resort with his older sister and ventured into the cold after the chairlifts closed that evening.
Advertisement
To Smith, the idea of hustling up a snow-covered mountain on skis and then racing back down sounded challenging but doable. The accomplished former high school middle-distance runner assumed that he was sufficiently fit. Plus, he was comfortable on skis from frequent family trips to Midwest ski areas when he was a kid.
Smith’s overconfidence quickly faded on his way up the mountain as his legs grew weary and he struggled to maintain a rhythm in two feet of soft, fresh snow. Then, when he finally reached the top and was ready to ski downhill, he labored endlessly trying to peel off the climbing skins that had provided him traction on the ascent.
It only got worse for Smith a few weeks later when he entered his first ski mountaineering race but did not come close to finishing.
“On the first descent, I probably crashed two or three times, my skins got all wet and I lost some gear,” Smith told Yahoo Sports with a sheepish chuckle. “And then I got to the bottom and I couldn’t start the next climb because my skins wouldn’t stick to my skis anymore.”
Advertisement
That was how Smith’s skimo career started at 18. He has come a long way since then. The 29-year-old native of Rockford, Illinois, is one of two skimo athletes who will represent the U.S. this week in Italy when the sport makes its Winter Olympics debut.
The sport’s first Olympic medals will go to the winners of the fast-paced, edge-of-your-seat men’s and women’s sprint races scheduled for Thursday in the ski resort town of Bormio. Athletes will battle shoulder-to-shoulder across three phases: climbing uphill with skins attached to the bottom of their skis, boot-packing up steps and charging downhill around race gates to the finish line.
Eighteen men and women will compete in three qualifying heats on Thursday. Twelve men and women will advance to the semifinals later the same day. The top six men and women will strap into their gear a third time to vie for medals in the finals.
Smith and teammate Anna Gibson, 26, will compete two days later in the longer-distance mixed relay, a four-lap, roughly 30-minute race around a course expected to contain two ascents, two descents and a boot-packing section. Teammates alternate laps, with the duo that finishes four laps the fastest claiming gold.
Advertisement
“I think people are really going to like seeing it in the Olympics because it combines a lot of sports that have a rich history in the Olympics,” Smith said. “People enjoy watching the aerobic suffering in a cross-country race and the speed of a downhill race. We’re sort of melding those two, plus you essentially have F-1-style pit stops with the transitions in between.”
Cam Smith took up ski mountaineering 11 years ago, and now is hoping to win an Olympic medal in Italy. (Photo by Valerio Pennicino/Getty Images)
(Valerio Pennicino via Getty Images)
Born out of necessity
Ski mountaineering originated not as an organized sport but as a means of survival. For thousands of years, people have worn skis due to the practical need to traverse mountainous or hilly terrain during the snowy winter months.
Advertisement
During the first and second World Wars, specialized military units prepared for Alpine warfare by training soldiers in winter survival, skiing and combat. Military training exercises and competitions laid the foundation for the first structured civilian ski mountaineering races.
Athletes from Alps countries like France, Italy and Switzerland have historically dominated the sport of ski mountaineering. Spain has recently emerged as a serious challenger with several potential medal contenders.
While skimo has gained popularity outside of Europe, fewer athletes in North America or Asia grew up participating in the sport. They often transition to skimo as adults from other sports that require speed, strength or endurance, from downhill skiing, to cross-country skiing, to distance running, to cycling — even speed skating.
Among those to make such a switch is Gibson, a native of Jackson, Wyoming, whose athletic background makes her seem as though she was engineered in a lab for skimo. In elementary school, she took up downhill ski racing. By high school, she realized her body was better suited to endurance sports and won a combined 17 Wyoming state titles in track, cross-country and nordic skiing.
Advertisement
Skiing remained a passion of Gibson’s even as she focused on middle-distance running at the University of Washington and on professional trail running after college. She would often ski for fun during the winter months or hammer up a snow-covered hill in lightweight boots or skis as part of her offseason training regimen.
Gibson was familiar enough with skimo to consider it part of her future, but, as recently as nine months ago, she says she “did not think that would be in 2025.” Then Smith approached her in June after they both competed at the Broken Arrow Skyrace, a challenging, multi-day trail running event in California.
“If the answer is no, just tell me and I’ll never bother you about this again, but you should race skimo,” Gibson remembers Smith telling her.
Cam Smith and Anna Gibson will be medal contenders when ski mountaineering makes its Olympic debut in Italy. (Courtesy of Owen Crandall)
At that time, the U.S. was trailing Canada in a tight two-team battle to qualify for the Olympics as North America’s highest-ranked mixed relay team. USA Skimo had launched a last-gasp search for newcomers who could help defeat the Canadians and overtake them in the standings at the final Olympic qualifying event in December.
Advertisement
Smith told Gibson that she could be the difference between the U.S. qualifying for the Olympics or missing it, the difference between him achieving a decade-long dream or squandering what could be his lone opportunity. He predicted that she could learn the sport in a matter of months given her unique combination of fitness, skiing prowess and mental determination.
“I basically left that conversation thinking there was a slim chance I would decide to do this, but maaaybe,” Gibson told Yahoo Sports. “Then I couldn’t stop thinking about it. I talked to a couple people in my life, my coach, my family, a couple close friends and everyone was like, ‘Why would you not do that? You have to!’ They could just tell how excited I was about it just by talking to me.”
Proof that Smith was correct about Gibson arrived soon after that. She outperformed the skimo veterans who had previously teamed with Smith at a selection race designed to determine the U.S.’s best duo for the mixed relay. Then she and Smith smashed all reasonable expectations in their first World Cup race together.
On December 6, at Solitude Mountain Resort in Utah, Gibson and Smith needed only to finish higher than their Canadian rivals to claim North America’s Olympic quota spot. The Americans accomplished more than that, demolishing a world-class field. Their time of 32 minutes, 17.6 seconds was nearly a minute ahead of second-place Italy.
Advertisement
“It’s the realization of a childhood dream,” Smith said. “We trained all spring, summer and fall knowing that 30 minutes on December 6 was going to determine everything. Either we perform well and we achieve the dream of qualifying or we don’t and we’ll go home. I think that really motivated our team.”
Before that World Cup race, just making these Olympics counted as a success for USA Skimo. Once Smith and Gibson outclassed top teams from Italy, Switzerland, Germany and elsewhere, it raised expectations.
Could Smith and Gibson actually challenge for a medal? They’re not ruling anything out.
“People were having to explain to me that we’re now in the picture in terms of competing for a medal,” Gibson said. “As I adjusted to the news that we were going to the Olympics, I’ve just been getting more and more excited about that possibility.”
