There are many different ways to qualify for Olympic ski mountaineering, the newest sport making its debut at the 2026 Winter Games. Italy earned its quotas automatically for each ski mountaineering discipline as the host country. Other countries, such as France or Spain, have athletes with repeated success during the qualification period that earned them slots for the upcoming Games. 

But the U.S., a relative newcomer to the sport, still is on the outside looking in. With one qualifier race remaining on home soil, the USA Skimo National Team aims to make waves for North American representation in the sport at the 2026 Winter Olympics. 

It’s a tall task for USA Skimo, the governing body for ski mountaineering in the United States, which only formed last decade. American skimo coaches and athletes alike are determined to snag a qualification spot to bolster their status on the international stage, but their additional goals stretch beyond Milan Cortina, with the determination to make ski mountaineering more popular within the country, just as it has in Europe.

Born in Europe, ski mountaineering developed from a practical mode of winter travel in the 19th century to a formal competition throughout the 20th century in the Alps, Tatras and Pyrenees mountain ranges. Decades of scattered competition throughout the continent inevitably formed into the first European Cup and European championships in 1995, five years before the first world championships were held in France circa 2002.

A multi-decade head start has separated the level of competition between continents. The last time a non-European athlete earned a medal at a ski mountaineering world championships in a senior race was in 2013, when American Nina Silitch captured the silver medal in the women’s sprint race. At the 2025 World Championships, France took home four gold medals at the senior level, Switzerland won two events, and both Sweden and Spain each won an event.

It is no wonder that Italy is a perfect debut venue for ski mountaineering; since having 30,000 active participants in the sport recreationally or competitively in 2011, Italy has just under 100,000 people who have participated in the sport in the year leading up to the Winter Games. 

During a much earlier stage of the sport’s development, competitive ski mountaineering in the United States is beginning to take shape. In Sarah Cookler’s eyes, USA Skimo’s newly-appointed Head of Sport, qualifying for the 2026 Winter Games is not the end-all be-all.

As part of Project Podium, an initiative launched in August 2024 by USA Skimo to “ensure the success of USA skimo athletes in global competition,” Cookler was hired to oversee the U.S. ski mountaineering team’s development from youth to senior levels.

She describes her job description as a three-fold responsibility: creating a foundation of the sport in the U.S. via youth programs, working with coaches and clubs attempting to develop programs in the country, and strengthening the status of the national team.

With little time before the Olympic qualification period, one of Cookler’s main objectives was securing a head coach for the senior national team, made possible by donations.

“We have a small amount of funding that [is a] single digit percentage compared to any other sport,” Cookler said. “Right now, private donors are helping us, but yes, going from zero funding to some funding helps significantly. It helps provide a salary for our coach, to provide coaching for our athletes, which makes a significant difference.”

Before assuming her new position, Cookler competitively raced for the USA Skimo National Team in 2015 and 2019, additionally morphing into a coach of a youth ski mountaineering team, Silverfork Skimo, in Brighton, Utah. Over a decade of youth coaching and team management experience made her a fit for the first Head of Sport in USA Skimo history.

Her involvement in the sport has connected her with countless prominent figures worldwide in ski mountaineering, including Oscar Angeloni, a skimo coach with decades of experience coaching senior-level athletes on Italy, Switzerland and China’s national teams. 

With new funding and actively searching for a head coach, Cookler asked Angeloni if he knew any skimo coaches who would be willing to lead the U.S. during the sport’s first Olympic qualification period and beyond.

Angeloni replied, “I might be interested.”

Cookler’s coaching search came to an abrupt halt – Angeloni was a perfect fit. His relationship with the U.S. dates back over a decade, first as an ISMF representative during the Wasatch Powderkeg, an annual skimo race in Utah at Solitude Mountain Resort. 

Cookler had come into contact with Angeloni while overseeing the youth national team at World Cup events, while Angeloni coached other national teams, admiring his coaching style and success from a distance.

“With the United States team, it’s new because it’s a younger team,” Angeloni said when asked about taking the U.S. job. “My motivation is because it’s new, and because of the U.S. potential for the future.”

Funding for USA Skimo allows Angeloni to work closely with the national team, creating coaching plans and allowing the senior team to embark on training camps ahead of the upcoming Skimo season.

When Angeloni started last season at the first training camp, he emphasized training the senior athletes in the Olympic disciplines of ski mountaineering. For the 2026 Winter Games, only the sprint race and mixed relay race, the shorter disciplines of the sport, will be in play. Angeloni mentioned the elite-level teams (France, Spain, Switzerland, Italy) have been training for the specific discipline for years in preparation for Olympic success.

Angeloni, who coached with the Swiss team, started working with senior athletes on the discipline as early as 2018. The country now features some of the most successful sprint skimo athletes in the world. Switzerland’s Marianne Fatton won the women’s sprint race at the 2025 Ski Mountaineering World Championships, and Jon Kistler came in third for the men’s senior sprint race while winning in the U23 discipline.

The same change in coaching philosophy is true for other coaches, such as Spain’s Jordi Martin Guillaumes, who has been training with the Spanish athletes in the relay and sprint disciplines as soon as they knew which disciplines would debut in Milan. Spain’s mixed relay team won the Olympic test event in Bormio and came in second place at the world championships this year, while Spaniard Oriol Cardona Coll took home the gold at the world championships in the men’s sprint.

Despite this advantage, the American roster has promising talent at both the senior and youth levels of the sport, including the first North American male athlete to reach the podium in the ISMF World Cup. 

Around ten years ago, Cameron Smith, a young Illinois native, joined his sister on The Grand Traverse, a 40-mile ski mountaineering race stretching from Crested Butte to Aspen, using hand-me-down equipment for his first competition ever. He crashed three times on the first descent. His skins did not stick to his skis after the first climb. All his equipment was frozen – so was he. But he was instantly hooked.

“I just thought it was really fun and exciting and a cool way to travel,” Smith said. “And I wasn't really trying to do it competitively, I just wanted to finish this one event.”

Afterward, he started to compete in more races. He competed in the U23 events, typically the only entrant in the race, and gradually earned new equipment for winning the category. He described his progression as slow, but linear, constantly improving technique and equipment every year. In his age-21 season in 2017, he went to Europe for the first time to compete. 

Finishing last in most of the races, he refused to give up.

What makes it unique to me is those components of the climb and the descent, and the technical components. It’s fun to have all these different challenges of the uphill, downhill and the in between. It’s such a fun puzzle to try and solve that you have to sort of make progress in all the different ways.

Fast forward to 2022, when Smith made history. With years of competition under his belt, Smith was competing in Andorra on the World Cup circuit. But he almost did not compete in the race; his roommate tested positive with COVID-19. Though not allowed to compete in the individual race on the first day of competition, he managed to get the green light for the vertical race seconds before the vertical race stared, with the starting gun sounding as he approached the start. 

Starting 40 meters behind the line, he pushed hard and entered the zone, passing several competitors and continuing to move up the field. Suddenly, he recognized he was climbing among the world’s best skimo athletes.

His previous best finish in a senior race was 18th. That day, the kid from Illinois crossed the finish line in third.

“I sort of felt like I belonged ever since that moment, and because it was such a big step,” Smith said.

The result set the tone for U.S. athletes in skimo competitions. In a stroke of bad luck, Smith tore his ACL and had a shoulder injury that kept him out of competition for two years. But fully healthy, Smith has an aligned goal with the U.S. team this year: no matter who represents the team, the U.S. yearns to qualify for Milan. 

“I think we've done a really good job of being all in together and knowing the number one priority is we get a spot for somebody and for the country, because then that'll lead us to bigger things in four and eight years,” Smith said.

Other athletes on the team agree, like Hali Hafeman, a newer athlete to the sport. Hafeman, who grew up in a skiing family, got into ski mountaineering to accomplish her dream of making a national skiing team. Training out of hours from her day job as a chemical process engineer, Hafeman made the national team in 2022 and has been a part of the team since.

“A lot of them have full-time jobs, or are just investing a lot of their own time and money into into the same goal, and part of the mixed relay is working together as a team to get the Olympic quota spot,” Hafeman said. “I think the camaraderie has been really great.”

Currently on the outside looking in of earning a quota spot, the U.S. has one more opportunity to qualify for the Winter Olympics in ski mountaineering. With the qualification period ending on Dec. 21, 2025, there is one more World Cup race within the period: a mixed relay event at Solitude Mountain Resort in Utah.

The race itself almost did not happen when the ISMF reached out to countries asking to host the event, but the U.S. was willing to. Given the implications of the race on the team's qualification, Cookler and the team are relieved they have one more chance.

With the rankings of U.S. athletes in the sprint race too low, the best chance for Americans to qualify for ski mountaineering comes from a specific rule selecting the top mixed relay country from each continent to compete. Canada ranks one position higher than the U.S. and currently holds the quota spot for the Americas. If the U.S. outperforms Canada in the mixed relay race, they earn qualification for one man and one woman athlete in the mixed relay and sprint disciplines.

The USA Skimo National Team has not selected who they will pick to represent the U.S. in the mixed relay race to earn the qualification spots, but the next few months leading up to the season will be the most crucial. Following a late-August training camp, the team will head to Italy to work on snow with specific discipline training, including technical transition work and short-intensity practices. Heading back to Utah in November for the final training camp, the U.S. will have to decide on the mixed relay team to give them the best shot of securing qualification leading up to the Dec. 6 race.

Even if the U.S. misses qualification, Angeloni believes in the potential of the group beyond the Milan Cortina Games because of the strong youth presence on the team. 

"Youth athletes are the future. We have a big youth team," Angeloni said. "Youth athletes need the experience in the international race, of course, but I am very positive because the youth athletes are very fast, not only in the movement in the sport, but very fast to understand the development of the sport."

The most prominent of the bunch is Griffin Briley, who broke through for the U.S. in the U20 discipline with three wins and a bronze medal at the 2025 World Championships, including a win in the sprint race and third-place finish in the mixed relay. Briley, still 19 years old, has begun racing in senior races despite his eligibility for the U20 division. 

Gold medalist Griffin Briley poses with his medal from the U20 sprint race on the podium during the 2025 ISMF Ski Mountaineering World Championships.

Photo by Valerio Pennicino/Getty Images

Briley is happy to have been with members of the U.S. team during this past World Cup season in Europe, getting to build team camaraderie during the season because of the increase in resources from sponsors and the national team.

"In the past, it wasn't so common for the U.S. team to do things like that, where we were all together at the same time for extended periods of time, and that was a game changer, being able to be together," Briley said.

Briley is just one of many youth skimo athletes that the U.S. can develop for future Olympics beyond Milan Cortina. The USA Skimo National Team may not qualify in 2026, but the growth of the sport is undeniable as the Americans chase improvement and international recognition within the sport.