Junge Welt: Not for Purists – Dec 10, 2025

The quota places for the ski mountaineering competitions at the 2026 Winter Olympics have been taken. The World Cup races last weekend in Solitude in the US state of Utah were the last ones that counted for qualification. Germany will start with three athletes, two women and one man. There was still a chance in Solitude to get a second quota place and thus the maximum number of places among the men, but nothing came of it.

What is ski mountaineering? More commonly, people talk about ski touring: you strap skins (these days mostly made of synthetic fibers) onto your skis, run up the mountain and ski down again with the skins in your backpack. Ski tours are popular. The German Alpine Club estimates there are half a million ski tourers in Germany. Purists among them, of course, reject ski mountaineering as a competitive sport. For them, ski touring is an alternative to the commercial ski industry and the fight for hundredths of a second. But you can’t always choose.

The international ski mountaineering association ISMF strives to make the competitive sport as attractive as possible. The athletes compete directly against each other in races with six to twelve participants, and the descents are spectacular. At the Olympic Games, the individual team opted for sprint competitions that pass quickly: everything goes so quickly, and after three minutes the fun is over again. In Solitude, a height difference of 68 meters had to be overcome in the sprint. Passionate ski tourers don’t even want to get out of bed. The Olympic mixed relay (one woman, one man) lasts at least half an hour.

Did the International Olympic Committee (IOC) make ski mountaineering Olympic to give the host country Italy a few extra medals? The Italian ski mountaineers are among the strongest, alongside their colleagues from France, Spain and Switzerland. Well, you can’t say that. But the IOK likes to select new sports with local needs in mind. The Olympic ski mountaineering competitions will be launched in Bormio in February. Not in Milan or Cortina d’Ampezzo, the official venues, but you don’t have to take it that seriously.

Nothing came of fourth place in the quota for Germany because Finn Hösch (DAV Bergland Munich) was eliminated in one of the semi-final runs in Solitude. In the mixed relay, he and Tatjana Paller (DAV Tölz) crossed the finish line in third place, but were ranked fourth. Paller had lost one of her ski skins on the descent, which resulted in a time penalty. It’s lucky that no Olympic medals were awarded in Solitude. The winners from the USA, Anna Gibson and Cameron Smith, were overjoyed, not only clinching the USA’s first ever podium place in the World Cup, but also securing the North American quota place for participation in the Olympics in a direct duel with Canada.

There has been a World Cup in ski mountaineering since 2004, and world championships since 2002. Not all top athletes made the grueling journey to the USA. With Thibault Anselmet and Emily Harrop, both from France, the dominators of previous years were missing. Anselmet won the overall World Cup three times in a row, Harrop even four times. Both are multiple medal winners at the biennial World Championships. It remains to be seen whether they can withstand the pressure at the Olympics. They will compete together in the mixed relay.

Germany has an outside chance of winning a medal at the Olympics. At the 2025 World Championships in Morgins, Switzerland, Tatjana Paller won bronze in the sprint, although she only finished fifth. Like that? Two of the athletes in front of her had lost their ski skins on the descent. Paller sporty: “Sometimes you’re lucky, sometimes you’re unlucky. That’s the game.”