Australia has announced the two athletes who will compete in ski mountaineering at the Milano Cortina 2026 Winter Olympic Games.
Lara Hamilton has been named to her first Olympic team, while cross-country veteran Phillip Bellingham has been named to compete at his fourth Games.
Hamilton, 27, is a genuine all-rounder. A DJ at night and a competitive trail runner in the summer.
"I've always loved pushing my limits," she said.
"It just so happened that I've truly fallen in love with skimo. I live for adventuring in the mountains; it makes me feel alive.
"In the winter, skiing is the priority and trail running helps me maintain a higher training volume and adds to my fitness. My pursuits in music help fuel my training sessions, as I use it as a tool. They also add a creative element to my life, which is heavily focused on mountain sports."
Bellingham has competed in cross-country events at the Sochi, PyeongChang and Beijing Olympics, finishing 22nd in the team sprint with Seve de Campo.
He will be just the second Australian to compete in two Winter Olympic sports, after Jenny Lyons (nee Owens), who competed in alpine skiing in 2002 and then in freestyle skiing (ski cross) in 2010 and 2014.
"It means a lot to me to be named in another Olympic team," Bellingham, 34, said.
"Never in my wildest dreams did I ever think I would compete at four Olympics, so it's an absolute honour.
"The journey has been long and quite humbling. I had to go back to the beginning, work on the basics and rebuild myself from the ground up. But this process was also quite inspiring as I saw quick improvements and it was a new challenge on what I'd been doing for so long."
Ski mountaineering, or skimo, is the newest of the Olympic sports and will be contested for the first time at this year's Winter Games.
It did previously feature at the 2020 Youth Olympic Winter Games in Lausanne.
Apart from the obvious question, what even is ski mountaineering, there are plenty of other queries that need addressing too. For example, how do athletes slide up hill on skis? What on earth are skins? And why is it suited to Australian slopes?
What is skimo?
Immensely popular in the European Alps, skimo sees skiers climb up the side of a mountain on their skis, or sometimes on foot with the skis attached to their backs, before descending back down in a far more orthodox manner.
Skiers are able to climb up hill with skis on as they have "skins" attached, strips of fabric that allow the ski to grip on the uphill sections.
"Skimo, in the traditional sense of the word … it's like back-country skiing, but lightweight and efficient," Hamilton told ABC Sport.
"You use the skis to go and ideally explore places that are off-piste, trying to get up high, tag some peaks and then, once you've climbed, you rip your skins off and you transition the skis to downhill mode and you ski down the mountain."
The skins then need to be removed — but not discarded. They are stored in a little pouch on the front of the athlete's ski suit before they head back downhill.
"The discipline that's going to the Olympics is the sprint, which features all the techniques and skills of ski mountaineering, from a transition aspect and a downhill-skiing aspect," Hamilton said.
"But there are also other disciplines like vertical, individual, and a mixed relay, which is also going to be featured in the Olympics."
Sprint races will only last about three minutes, with a qualification round before semi-finals and finals, which all take place on the same day.
Individual races last a whole lot longer, between an hour and two hours.
At the 2026 Games there are men's and women's sprint events, as well as a mixed team relay that features one man and one woman who each complete the course twice.
Why Australia could 'fall in love' with skimo
Hamilton got into skimo essentially to keep herself fit during the winter.
A professional trail runner who competes on the world cup circuit or Golden Trail series, Hamilton used the cold winters in her Colorado training base to get out on skis and keep up her extraordinary fitness levels.
"I transitioned over from Nordic skiing and that's a pretty smooth transition, I guess, in the way that classic skiing is kind of a similar movement, but mainly because I was living in Colorado at the time and where I was living is the coldest city in the lower 48 [states]," Hamilton said.
"I needed another medium to kind of keep my volume up and stay fit.
"I noticed everyone was skiing up the hill after the lifts had shut and before they had opened in the mornings and I thought, 'OK, I'll just invest in a pair of these lightweight skimo set-up skis.
"With the advice from some friends [I] just started joining the local groups, making friends who did the sport, and that was that.
"That was at the end of 2021. And yeah, I haven't stopped since."
Hamilton noted Australia's ski fields were "awesome" for skimo.
"I really feel like it's a sport that Australia will fall in love with … it's like hiking but with skis on," Hamilton said.
"You can see things that you couldn't normally see in the winter unless you climb up there.
"Australia's environment is actually awesome for it because a lot of our slopes are not super steep … the avalanche risk is slightly less, so it would be a really good medium to explore the back country."
Where is it taking place?
Ascending the famous Stelvio is nothing new — if you're a cyclist in the Giro d'Italia, that is.
But it's on these famous slopes where the inaugural Olympic skimo competition will take place, around the village of Bormio.
It is the same area that will host the men's alpine skiing events.
The course has already been given the tick of approval from athletes, who took to the slopes in February 2025 for the official test event.
It featured four sections: an ascent on skins, followed by a 10-metre elevation gain on steps climbed on foot, another short ski ascent and finally, a 70m downhill course with banked turns.
"The course is very good, so it promises to be a great Olympic Games next year," two-time overall World Cup winner Thibault Anselmet of France told Olympics.com.
"There's everything, some very steep parts, some parts that are a bit flatter, a nice gate, a nice downhill."
Frenchwoman Emily Harrop and Spaniard Oriol Cardona Coll claimed victories in what was the fifth leg of the 2024/25 ISMF World Cup.
