A country that only has five Winter Olympic medals is primed to be a contender for all three medals in ski mountaineering, the newest addition to the catalog of sports at the 2026 Milan Cortina Olympics. 

It’s been an aligned goal for Spanish “skimo” senior head coach Jordi Martin Guillaumes and his team to achieve success at the international level. But Guillaumes and his team have not just been hoping for an athlete on the podium since it became added to the events by the International Olympic Committee on July 20, 2021.

“As soon as we realized that we have the Olympics, we’re going for gold,” Guillaumes said.

Ahead of the Winter Games, Guillaumes became the head coach of Spain’s senior ski mountaineering team in 2024 after serving as a coach of the development team since 2017. He first tried skimo at age 15 and competed in local and regional events. After several years studying sports science in Barcelona and London, he learned of an opportunity to be a coach on the development side of Spain’s new ski mountaineering national team.

He spent several years building a structure for Spain's ski mountaineering team from the ground up, working with the youth team, as well as organizing international opportunities for the entire team. Becoming head coach of the senior squad comes with added responsibilities due to Spain's quest to win medals in ski mountaineering.

While skimo has experienced a surge in popularity since the early 2000s, the sport unofficially made its debut at the first Winter Olympics in 1924 through a military ski patrol event that incorporated elements of both ski mountaineering and biathlon. It was 2007 that marked the inaugural year for the International Ski Mountaineering Federation (ISMF), which hosts the events that make up the annual World Cup for the sport.

Since the first ski mountaineering World Cup, France and Italy have dominated the professional ski mountaineering landscape, two countries known for their elite mountain sport talent. In 2025, France features women's ski mountaineering athlete Emily Harrop, who ranks first in the 2025 World Cup provisional rankings in the vertical, sprint and overall categories (second in the individual). Thibault Anselmet, a French ski mountaineering athlete (partners with Harrop in mixed relay competition), is atop the 2025 World Cup men's overall provisional rankings.

"I think the big difference between us and them is they have more population next to snow," Guillaumes said. "You can find more talent, let's say, for the reason we [also have] talented athletes, but we need to focus more on that development and on the methodology."

Despite dominance from the two countries, as well as success in the sport from Switzerland, Spain has had two former ski mountaineering athletes find success at the international level: Claudia Galicia Cotrina on the women’s side, a two-time world champion, and Kilian Jornet, a legendary Spanish marathon athlete who also was a four-time individual winner and two-time vertical winner within Ski Mountaineering World Cup competition.

This past success has given Guillaumes and his team the goal to get back to the top of the national stage. Though away from competitions, Jornet comes back to train with Spain’s team and offer his expertise in the sport.

“Since the early stages of the international circuit, Spain has been at the top of many competitions,” Guillaumes said. “We have this heritage, we have this culture, we have this know-how and we have been successful in terms of what we can share generation through generation.”

There also has been recent success for the Spanish Federation for Mountain and Climbing Sports (FEDME) at the 2020 Tokyo Summer Olympics, when Alberto Gines Lopez took the inaugural gold medal for sport climbing and the first gold medal for the club. The win for the federation in a new Olympic sport has been an inspiration for the ski mountaineering team.

"It [and Alberto Gines Lopez] has been a good reference to trust in our job and to get focused [on] the process. Because the most important thing is to get focused [on] the process, not [on] the result," Guillaumes said.

Another advantage for Spain comes via the format ski mountaineering will take at the 2026 Milan Cortina Games. Though three disciplines make up ski mountaineering, the IOC selected the sprint, the shortest but fastest of the disciplines, to make up two of the three disciplines.

The individual race, the main discipline in ski mountaineering, consists of a grueling marathon of uphill sprints on skins – a carpet-like material that ski mountaineering athletes attach during uphill sections of races for traction, the main factor separating skimo from other ski sports – along with on-foot and downhill sections. While courses range in elevation and distance, the typical individual race lasts around an hour and a half and covers roughly 1,600m of elevation gain. Vertical, like the name suggests, is an uphill-only race on skins, ranging from 500-700m of elevation gain.

Enter Spain. Out of the three disciplines, the country has the most success in the sprint event, a mad dash of quick uphill and downhill skiing with winners typically clocking in times around three minutes and a course elevation gain of up to 70m. During the 2024-25 season, Spain’s Oriol Cardona Coll won the men’s sprint World Cup title while Ana Alonso came in third in the women’s sprint rankings to end the season.

The success in the sprint race for Spain partially is due to the practice design by the Spanish team both intentionally and due to environmental constraints. Depending on the season, Spain can be especially challenging to practice full ski mountaineering races due to the lack of snow in the country, which has been below average the last three years, according to Guillaumes.

“It's very difficult for us to train for team races and individual races, so the climatic changes force us to focus on the short disciplines,” Guillaumes said.

While his athletes currently are training from their homes, the Spanish team will begin camp in July with dry training. The sport requires versatility in many aspects of training: endurance for the uphill stretches of the courses, strength training to power the legs and altitude training to acclimate to racing at higher elevations, which they do before migrating to Italy for on-course training in October.

Without access to snow in the warmer months in Spain, land training varies from weight, bike and footwork training for a methodical practice in preparation for snow practices. This is where Guillaumes is forced to use his creativity in creating various exercises for the athletes to perform in the offseason, including the use of rollerskis, which are used to increase balance and strength of similar ski motions.  Other training includes on-foot mountain climbing with poles and biking to build a physique and bike training to endure a steady pace throughout the course.

With success on the sprint course because of the specified training regimen, Spain also will be a contender for the third discipline of Olympic ski mountaineering: the mixed relay, a duo of one male and one female athlete completing two laps each while alternating on a slightly longer course than the sprint. During the 2024-25 season, Spain’s duo of Cardona Coll and Alonso were the top-ranked mixed relay duo, winning three of the five mixed relay events and finishing as runner-ups in two.

“When one has to push the team, if another doesn't have a good day, the other carries the team on their shoulder,” Guillaumes said. “This is very important, a good team synergy.”

Guillaumes praised his top two athletes, Cardona Coll and Alonso, as the “elders” of the team who will make up two of the four quota spots that Spain has earned for ski mountaineering (the maximum allotted). Both came to the sport with prior mountain sports experience. Despite challenges throughout the events and through the years on the national team, Guillaumes said the two trust each other throughout the race and emphasized their ability to quickly transition both on-and-off skins and with each other on the mixed relay course.

The hard work paid off at the Olympic test in Bormio, Italy on Feb. 22-23, the course that will be used for all three disciplines as well as the host of the men’s Alpine skiing events at the 2026 Games. In the official test, Cardona Coll emerged victorious as the winner of the men’s sprint while the duo of Cardona Coll and Alonso took home the mixed relay event, an emotional moment for Guillaumes and his team.

There is still work to be done for the team as they figure out the latter two athletes who will make up Spain’s four-person Olympic ski mountaineering team, which will be decided at the first World Cup event of the 2025-26 season at the Solitude event in Salt Lake City, Utah on Dec. 6-7. They will represent four of the 36 athletes selected to compete in the sport's first-ever Olympics from Feb. 19-21.

Spain has high expectations to be near the top of the ski mountaineering events, a country that never has earned multiple medals at a single Winter Olympic Games. Just getting there is an accomplishment, but Guillaumes hopes the team goals come full circle with gold medals.