The Winter Olympics gets 8 new events, including its first new sport in decades
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These Winter Olympics will feature a new sport for the first time in over three decades.
While the Games regularly add events within existing disciplines, they haven’t introduced an entirely new sport since the return of skeleton in 2002.
That changes this year with the debut of ski mountaineering, aka “skimo.”
The sport, which involves hiking up and skiing down a mountain, will feature three events: women’s sprint, men’s sprint and mixed relay.
That’s in addition to five brand new competitions in longtime Winter Olympic sports — for a grand total of eight new medal opportunities at this year’s Games. Here’s what to know about them.
The new sport: ski mountaineering
In ski mountaineering, athletes navigate a set course amidst rugged terrain. They attach climbing skins to the base of their skis while they ascend a mountain, quickly maneuver their skis off to tackle a series of steps on foot, then readjust and ski back down.
The sprint race consists of an ascent and descent, starting with time trials and seeding athletes into groups of six. In the mixed relay, teams of one man and one woman alternate four laps — two ascents and two descents — on a longer course (with an elevation gain of 460 feet compared to 230 in the sprint).
According to Team USA, ski mountaineering has its roots in the “need to traverse the snow-covered landscapes of Europe in prehistoric times,” and can officially be traced back to the mountains of Switzerland in 1897.
But the sport known as skimo really took off in the 21st century, hosting its first world championships in France in 2002 and establishing a World Cup circuit two years later.
It was added to the Winter Youth Olympic Games in 2020, and the following year was approved for inclusion in Milano Cortina — a fitting country for its Olympic debut, since the sport has a long history and many international champions in Italy.
Ski mountaineering competitions will be held in the Valtellina Valley town of Bormio, at the same venue as Alpine skiing.
The U.S. team narrowly qualified for the Games in a high-stakes Utah race in early December, the very last chance for teams to earn Olympic ranking points.
The mixed relay team of Anna Gibson and Cam Smith won its race by a minute and a half on home snow, beating rival Canada to take home a gold medal and secure for Team USA the continent’s last Olympics spot. It wasn’t just a major victory, but a chance for Team USA to educate curious Instagram followers about the sport itself.
New events within skeleton, luge, ski jumping and moguls
The other new events are additional variations of existing competitions, giving more athletes — particularly women — a chance to compete:
There’s dual moguls, a freestyle skiing event in which two athletes compete side by side, performing aerial tricks on two jumps of a bumpy course. Traditional moguls, featuring one skier at a time, have been part of the Winter Games since the 1990s. This year will feature both men’s and women’s dual moguls.
Another new event is mixed team skeleton, which pairs one man and one woman from the same country to race down an ice track head-first on a small sled.
This year also marks the debut of women’s doubles luge, in which two women from the same country double up on the same sled to race down the track, feet-first. The existing doubles luge competition will officially become a men’s event, which it effectively has been since the 1960s, since women were technically eligible but never previously participated.
Ski jumping is also getting a brand new event, the women’s individual large hill competition. That means both men and women will compete in normal and large hill events, as well as a mixed team event, which made its debut in the 2022 Beijing Games.
Men have one additional ski jumping medal event, which is rebranding this year: the super team, a new format that replaces the traditional four-person team competition with pairs of two competing in up to three jumps. Olympics organizers say the restructuring makes the competition more dynamic and paves the way for smaller nations to participate.
Transcript:
SCOTT DETROW, HOST:
For the first time in three decades, the Winter Olympics will feature an entirely new sport when they officially kick off this Friday, ski mountaineering. The Olympics often tweak events within existing sports, so there are other new events to look forward to as well. NPR’s Rachel Treisman has been tracking all of this and joins us now from Milan. Hey, Rachel.
RACHEL TREISMAN, BYLINE: Hey.
DETROW: Let me just – I will admit, I don’t know the answer (laughter). What is ski mountaineering?
TREISMAN: You are not alone. So skimo, as the cool kids call it, has its roots in alpine countries, like Switzerland. And basically, it used to be kind of just a way to get around. It entails racing uphill on skis with these sticky things on the bottoms of them. Those are called climbing skins, and they basically let you go uphill with traction. And then when skiers get to the top, they have to take off their skis, throw them in their backpacks, maneuver on foot a little bit, and then rip off those skins to ski back down as fast as they can.
DETROW: So you ski uphill, you ski downhill. That’s the race.
TREISMAN: There’s a little bit in the middle.
DETROW: OK.
TREISMAN: But, essentially, yes.
DETROW: I mean, this sounds exhausting. Is there just one of these?
TREISMAN: So there are actually three events in skimo. There’s a women’s sprint, a men’s sprint and a mixed relay. And that’s teams of one man and one woman. And that’s what the U.S. is competing in. The U.S. mixed relay team is made up of Anna Gibson and Cam Smith.
DETROW: OK, I’ve now educated myself on skimo. What are the other new events I need to learn about very quickly?
TREISMAN: Yeah, buckle up. This year’s Games has five new events in sports that already exist, like skiing and luge. So overall, there are a total of eight new medals up for grabs this year. A couple of those are in ski jumping, where women are getting their first chance to compete in the individual large hill competition that men have been doing for years.
And male ski jumpers are getting a rebrand of their traditional four-person competition. It’s called super team, and it now involves pairs of two competing. And freestyle skiing is adding dual moguls, which is pretty wild. It’s where two skiers race side by side down a very bumpy course and go over two different jumps to perform aerial tricks, like flips and twists. American mogul skier Tess Johnson is stoked.
TESS JOHNSON: Just to be a part of that history in and of itself is going to be incredible.
TREISMAN: And she says U.S. women could dominate.
JOHNSON: Our women’s team is very good at duals. We are currently ranked 1, 2, 3, 4.
TREISMAN: This year is also seeing a couple of new events in sliding sports. There will be mixed team skeleton, with a man and a woman from the same country sharing a sled, as well as women’s doubles luge. Altogether, this new crop of events gives women way more opportunities to participate and potentially medal.
DETROW: So there are 16 sports at these Olympics. This is the most in any Winter Games ever. I’m wondering what the process is. Like, maybe inspired by digging out from ice in D.C. the last week or so, like, what if I wanted to pitch, like, competitive snow shoveling? How does that happen?
TREISMAN: Good question. The short answer is that it’s up to the IOC, the International Olympic Committee. And they have some guidelines for new sports, like they must allow both men and women to compete. But the IOC also considers factors like how many countries and continents participate in it and how popular it is among younger people. So think breakdancing, which was added to the Paris Games in 2024.
DETROW: Never forget.
TREISMAN: I talked to Olympic historian Bill Mallon. And he thinks the Winter Games could use even more sports, since they have about half as many as the Summer Games in the same length of time. And actually, he’s not the only one.
BILL MALLON: The Olympic Charter for years has said that sports on the Olympic program have to be sports contested on snow or ice. And the IOC is actually now talking about changing that and bringing in two events within other sports that are held in the Summer Games.
TREISMAN: So not exactly snow shoveling. Those two sports are cross-country running and cyclo-cross racing, which is an off-road form of bike racing. So if either of those succeed, it would give us more events to watch in future Winter Games and also make them a lot more accessible to athletes from other parts of the world.
DETROW: Thank you so much, Rachel.
TREISMAN: Thank you.
DETROW: That is Rachel Treisman. And if you want to hear more, you can sign up for her newsletter, Rachel Goes to the Games, at npr.org/wintergames. You get a behind-the-scenes look at what it is like to be at and to cover these Games from the point of view of an NPR reporter experiencing it all for the first time npr.org/wintergames.
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