University of Utah freshman Landon Jakob just wanted to avoid sitting on a stationary bike all winter to stay in shape for his high school mountain bike racing team, when he first tried the newest Olympic sport, ski mountaineering, known as skimo to its fans.
“It was an easy ski with the team up by Guardsman Pass. I had stomach cramps the whole time. It was probably the hardest thing I’d ever done. I kind of wondered how I was going to be able to do it,” recalled Jakob, 18, a USA Skimo national team member.
What got him hooked on the historically European sport that’s set to debut next month at the 2026 Winter Games in Milan-Cortina, Italy, was the skimo community that’s developed in Utah. Mostly in their teens, they train hard but also have a lot of fun, Jakob said.
“We’re serious at times, for sure. But then we’ll also have practices that are like parties and we’ll wear costumes sometimes. It’s stuff like that, I think, that got me into it,” he said, describing competing in a winter solstice sprint race with disco balls and music while dressed as an elf.
Utah is already “the skimo capital of the U.S.”
— Team USA skimo athlete Landon Jakob
Spending time in the backcountry has also become a big draw for Jakob. Skimo, which requires skiers to climb uphill with and without special skis before racing downhill, is based on military training for patrols in the Alps of Italy, Switzerland and France.
“There’s something about being about to choose your line up a mountain without any trails and just go ski where you want,” he said. “I got into it that year and I raced my first youth world cup right away at the end of that season and got on the national team.”
He and another national team member from the same Silverfork Skimo team in Salt Lake City, McCall Birkinshaw, also 18, see themselves as potential Team USA members when Utah hosts the 2034 Winter Games.
Both are counting on the coverage of skimo in Italy to raise awareness of their sport.
Skimo is all about “endurance, and downhill skills, and strategy and even skimo-specific transition skills. It’s all those elements that make it such a fun spectator sport. I think it’s a perfect fit.”
— Team USA skimo athlete McCall Birkinshaw on the future of the sport
“We need more publicity in this sport, for sure,” said Birkinshaw, who graduated early from Skyline High School and plans to study medicine at the University of Utah. “It’s exciting. It feels like it’s about time, you know? This sport has been so small in the U.S. But it’s really had a breakthrough.”
That came at Solitude Mountain Resort, the site of December’s Salt Lake City Skimo World Cup. There, two Americans, newcomer Anna Gibson and Cameron Smith, unexpectedly won the season’s final mixed relay qualification event and are headed to Italy.
Birkinshaw describes skimo as the ideal Olympic sport, all about “endurance, and downhill skills, and strategy and even skimo-specific transition skills. It’s all those elements that make it such a fun spectator sport. I think it’s a perfect fit.”
Jakob said the opportunity for skimo at this year’s Olympics “will be huge.”
Utah is already “the skimo capital of the U.S.,” he said, as home to the national governing body for the sport, the U.S. Ski Mountaineering Association, also called USA Skimo, as well as the country’s biggest youth teams and about half the national team.
“I know a lot of people came up to that Solitude World Cup who had never heard of skimo and they watched it and thought it was the coolest, and the hardest, sport they had ever seen,” Jakob said. “I definitely think it deserves to stay in the Olympics.”
What new sports are coming to future Olympics?
But there’s no guarantee that skimo will be part of any future Winter Games beyond 2026.
That’s because skimo is among the sports added by the International Olympic Committee only for a specific Games. Part of a more flexible process for hosts, the intent of such additions is to showcase a host’s expertise as well as attract youth.
It’s up to Games organizers to propose new sports. The 2020 Summer Games in Tokyo, delayed a year due to the COVID-19 pandemic, introduced skateboarding, surfing, sport climbing and karate.
All but karate returned to the 2024 Summer Games in Paris and are on the program for the 2028 Summer Games in Los Angeles. Paris also saw breaking for the first time, but the hip-hop dance moves aren’t coming back for Los Angeles.
However, the California Games will feature several sports additions, including a pair of new Olympic sports, flag football and squash. Baseball, softball, lacrosse and cricket are all returning to the Olympics in 2028, in some cases after long absences.
Organizers of Utah’s 2034 Winter Games are years away from any decisions about adding new sports, but that hasn’t stopped enthusiasts from coming forward with suggestions about what they want to see.
Besides skimo, the growing list includes skijoring, a mashup of skiing and rodeo that originated in the West where a rider on horseback pulls a skier, and synchronized skating, which features teams of up to 20 ice skaters performing in unison.
Among the other contenders are a pair of sports that have nothing to do with the snow or ice typically associated with the Winter Games, cross-country running and cyclocross, a mix of road cycling, mountain biking and steeplechase.
How will Utah 2034 organizers pick new Winter Games sports?
“We’re popular, and we’ll be that way until we finalize this list. But that’s part of the process. Part of what’s great about the Olympics is it’s an evolving landscape,” said Brad Wilson, CEO of the Organizing Committee for the 2034 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games.
“The organizing committee will actually go through a process starting probably in late 2027 or ‘28, where we will start to evaluate all our sport disciplines, in particular adding anything that’s new,” he said.
Just how they’ll be evaluated has yet to be determined, but Wilson said he can promise now that “fan engagement will be part of it, whether or not it fits into our existing venues and maximizes their efficiency will be part of it.”
Other criteria expected to be considered is whether the proposed addition is “an emerging sport that people use, is it balancing men’s and women’s sports,” he said. “Ask me in about 2½ years what that criteria looks like.”
There may be sports now “on the radar screen to at least evaluate. But we are way, way, long before we start doing it,” Wilson said. “We will finalize that probably around 2030, 2031, of what our sports disciplines will be for our Games. So a long time before we get there.”
It remains to be seen what the IOC’s process for adding sports will be for the 2034 Games. Under new IOC President Kirsty Coventry of Zimbabwe, a working group is reviewing all of the Olympic program.
“Nothing’s off the table. They have a pretty big scope,” Coventry, the IOC president, told reporters recently about the Olympic program working group when asked if rotating Games sites was on the agenda.
“I’ve asked them to look at everything,” Coventry told reporters after taking office in mid-2025. That includes “the complexity of the Games; sport, but also the disciplines in each sport; look at the potential rotation between summer and winter.”
A member of that working group, World Athletics President Sebastian Coe, has made no secret of his interest in seeing cross-country running added to the Winter Games as soon as the 2030 Olympics in the French Alps.
Coe, an IOC member from Britain, has said the track and field event would be “a good opportunity” for athletes from Africa at the Winter Games. “Winter Games aren’t African. It doesn’t scream African,” he told The Associated Press at last year’s New York City Marathon.
Also a possibility according to Coe? Moving some indoor sports, like judo, from the Summer to the Winter Games, he told the Guardian, saying Coventry is willing “to think differently about the program, and what could go out of the stadium, and that mix between winter and summer.”
U.S. skimo on the ‘Olympic map now’
Not everyone in the sports world is ready to see such sweeping changes.
In November, the Winter Olympic Federations that represent the traditional Olympic winter sports — biathlon, bobsled and skeleton, hockey, luge, skating, ski and snowboard, and curling — issued a statement opposing summer sports at the Winter Games.
“The Winter Olympic Federations are firm in our belief that such an approach would dilute the brand, heritage, and identity that make the Olympic Winter Games unique — a celebration of sports practiced on snow and ice, with distinct culture, athletes, and fields of play," they said.
Winter Olympic Federations President Ivo Ferriani said skimo’s inclusion in this year’s Winter Games is “a successful example” of focusing on “evolving existing winter sports to attract broader participation and audiences.”
Skimo will be new to many Olympic viewers, especially in the United States, Utah’s Birkinshaw said, calling it “just so empowering” that their first exposure to the sport will be at a Winter Games where Team USA has a shot at medaling.
“Ski mountaineering has been a European-dominated sport for decades. It is so special, and honestly emotional, that the U.S. has built a name for ourselves in this sport,” she said. “We have shown the rest of the world we’re on this Olympic map now.”
