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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.
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