Here's How Team USA Can Qualify For Skimo’s 2026 Olympic Debut

The countdown is on to ski mountaineering’s Olympic debut, and for Team USA it will all come down to a world cup on home soil in December.

Skimo, a sport in which athletes scale up a mountain and then ski down it as fast as possible, will have three medal events at the Olympic Winter Games Milano Cortina 2026: a men’s sprint, a women’s sprint and a mixed relay.

Ten of the 36 quota spots for Milano Cortina have already been allocated, with the remaining 26 to be determined based on a combination of world rankings and regional representation.

After accumulating Olympic qualifying points throughout the 2024-25 world cup season, athletes have one last chance to boost their rankings when the 2025-26 world cup season kicks off Dec. 6-7 in Solitude, Utah.

That event also marks Team USA’s best hope to earn quota spots.

Though there are many factors in place for determining the entire field that will compete in skimo’s Olympic debut, the path for the U.S. is simple: beat Canada in the mixed relay in December.

How Qualification Works

The Milano Cortina Games have 36 quota spots for ski mountaineering — with 18 for men and 18 for women. Filling those spots is not as simple as taking the 18 highest-ranked athletes in each gender, however.

A country can earn a maximum of four quota spots, with only two allocated per gender. 

And while athletes compete to earn quota spots for their country, it doesn’t guarantee they’ll be in Italy. Each National Olympic Committee will select the athletes who will represent their country at the Games. 

How countries earn quota spots won’t limit what events their athlete can compete in at the Games, either. All 18 men and 18 women in Italy will be eligible to race in their respective sprint events. And any country that has a man and a woman at the Games can put a team into the relay. But a country can only enter one team into the relay.

While most spots remain unfilled, the qualification process for skimo has already begun. 

Where Things Stand

One men’s quota and one women’s quota were set aside for Italy, as the host country.

The next eight quota spots were up for grabs at the 2025 ISMF World Championships in March. The top two individuals in each sprint race, as well as the top two teams in the relay, punched their country’s tickets to Italy. 

France — which hosted the sport’s first world championships in 2002 and has a rich skimo tradition — has already filled up its four quota spots, qualifying a man and a woman through the sprints and another man and woman through the relay. 

Spain earned three quota spots back in March (one from the men’s sprint, plus a man and women through the relay), while Switzerland snagged one in the women’s sprint. 

Accounting for Italy’s two host country quotas, that leaves 26 remaining spots.

More Ways to Qualify

Athletes have two remaining pathways to qualify.

One is the continental quota, in which the top-ranked relay team from each continent will earn a men’s and women’s quota, provided the country hasn’t already clinched its spots in Milano Cortina. Four countries will qualify a men’s and women’s quota this way.

Finally, the remaining 18 quotas will be determined via the Olympic Mixed Relay Ranking List and the Olympic Sprint Ranking List.

Ten quotas — five men, five women — will be awarded to the top-ranked relay teams whose countries have not already qualified. An additional four men and four women will earn quotas based on their position in the sprint rankings, again accounting for whether their country has already qualified.

If, after all this, there are quotas that remain to be assigned, those will go to the next eligible athletes on the Olympic Sprint Ranking List.

Athletes began earning points toward those rankings in December 2024 at a world cup event in Courchevel, France. 

December’s world cup event in Solitude presents the final chance for athletes to climb up the Olympic lists for a chance to be a part of history in Italy. Both lists will be published Dec. 23, finalizing all quota spots for the Games. Each NOC will then have until Jan. 26 to pick which athletes will have the chance to be a part of skimo history in Italy. 

Team USA’s Best Shot At Qualifying

The most recent Olympic Sprint Ranking List includes seven U.S. women and seven U.S. men among the top 100 in their respective sprint rankings. However, with the top American man being No. 37 (Arthur Whitehead) and the top American woman No. 47 (Brooke Haynes), a Team USA athlete is not in position to qualify through the sprint rankings.

That leaves the mixed relay as Team USA’s best chance at qualifying for the Games. With one race left to earn qualifying points, the U.S. currently ranks 13th in the mixed relay, only a single point behind 12th-place Canada. No other team from the Americas region is in the mix, meaning that whoever finishes better this December in Solitude will earn the region’s two quota spots.

Cam Smith and Jessie Young may present the best chance for the U.S. to get those spots. The duo competed together at all six Olympic qualifying relay races this season, including the world championships. 

How The Games Will Work

Milano and Cortina will serve as the main host sites for the 2026 Olympics, but all the ski mountaineering events will take place in Bormio, a small town in the Italian Alps. Most athletes will already be familiar with the course, as the city hosted an Olympic test event back in February. Smith and Young finished 10th in the mixed relay at that event, two spots ahead of Canadians Emma Cook-Clarke and Aaron Robson. 

The 2026 Olympic men’s and women’s sprint events are scheduled for Feb. 19, while the mixed relay will take place on Feb. 21. 

Sprint races start with a three-phase ascent. Competitors scale up the course on skis, then run up a steeper portion on foot before putting their skis back on for the final ascent up the mountain. Athletes then ski down the slope via a giant slalom-like course to the finish line. 

There will be three phases of races at the Olympics — heats, semifinals and a final. Six athletes compete against each other in each race. 

The mixed relay is a longer race. First, the female athlete completes a cycle of two ascents and two descents before tagging in her male partner to then complete the same cycle. Each athlete then completes the same cycle a second time, with the race concluding once the male athlete crosses the finish line. 

Luke Hanlon is a sportswriter and editor based in Minneapolis. He is a freelance contributor to teamusa.com courtesy of Red Line Editorial, Inc.