In just one year, mountain skiing will make its debut as an Olympic discipline at the Milan-Cortina Games, a novelty that could provide the second gold medal in a winter Olympic competition after the one obtained in 1972 by Paquito Fernández Ochoa in Slalom. Oriol Cardona lives tied to the obsession of winning gold. It could even be two. The Catalan skier competes in individual and mixed relay. To enter as an Olympic discipline, mountain skiing has stripped itself of its essence to reinvent itself as a test that is as brief as it is spectacular and adjustable to the television molds of the present. Ski mountaineering, also known as ski mountaineering or, more recently, abbreviated to skimohas its reason for being in the mountains. It is a type of ski that turns its back on the resorts and their cable cars to seek a relationship with the winter mountains that requires knowledge of snow science, safety and classic mountaineering techniques.
A mountain skier climbs by sliding on his skis, whose skates are covered by synthetic skins that prevent slipping and allow him to advance on the snow comfortably. The lighter boots and two-piece bindings allow the heel to be freed up so that the movement is as natural as it is effective. When facing the descents, the skier removes the skins, anchors the boot to the binding, closes the anchors of his boot and descends as if he had alpine equipment. Or almost: elite equipment requires a tremendous compromise between lightness and efficiency. To ascend quickly, it is essential to carry the minimum weight on your feet: “it is about 800 grams per ski and 550 grams per boot,” clarifies Oriol Cardona. Such lightness is obviously paid for when descending complex snow in high mountains. But in the Olympic event, or in the World Cup events, the competitions are held in ski resorts.
Traditional mountain skiing tests used to last about three hours, a bit close to stages of a bicycle lap, pure resistance and accumulated elevation gain. But to access Olympism, its essence has been condensed: now it is a sprint. “The routes are very similar and the races last about three minutes. The difference in altitude to be overcome ranges between 60 and 80 meters. We run at full speed on the skis, we avoid some artificial diamonds on the rise, we take off the skis and climb a steep slope with stairs or steps carved in the snow, we put on the boards again and reach the highest point where we transition to descent, taking off our skins as soon as possible and launching ourselves as hard as we can to the finish line,” Cardona describes.
Each of the nine World Cup events is a rehearsal for the Games, and this year Eurosport offers live coverage. Each participant first faces an individual time trial and only the best thirty advance to the quarterfinals. Here, five rounds of six participants are carried out, men and women separately, of which only 12 qualify for the semifinal. In the final, the top six play for the win. After two rounds of the World Cup, Cardona won the first and did not reach the final in the second: “I had a bad day,” he summarizes, as he aspires to retain his world champion title in 2025.
On the screen, the passing of the heats turns out to be exciting, somewhat resembling the great events of the 800 meter dash, where failures are very expensive. Transitions are as important as pure physical performance: a mistake when removing the skins or putting the skis in the backpack to walk up the flight of stairs can mean the loss of two seconds and ruin the best expectations.
“I have had to change my way of training and I don’t compete in the summer running ultra trails either. I now need to be resistant to be able to run four races in a row but also very explosive, I do a lot of gym, I also bike in the preseason and I continue working on technique to avoid making mistakes in transitions. It takes just over two minutes of effort, but it is agonizing,” he warns. Between each series, Cardona gets on the roller seeking to eliminate lactic acid and follows a recovery dietary pattern.
In his beginnings at the highest level, Cardona coincided with Kilian Jornet in the Spanish team: if the latter is a legend of mountain racing, he is equally as a mountain skier. Before leaving the competition, Jornet won everything, promoting the coming of age of national skimo, championed mainly by the Catalan federation. If Switzerland is the great power to beat, Spain and France present women’s and men’s teams of the highest level. “I don’t know yet who will be my partner in the relay, but we have several teammates with a tremendous level, such as Ana Alonso or Marta García,” he warns.
Oriol Cardona, 30 years old, studied Physical Activity and Sports Sciences, was a coach, worked as a model… “And now I have put everything aside, everything, to focus on the Games. With institutional aid and my private sponsors I can live and dedicate myself exclusively to this dream. Then we’ll see…”, he ventures. If she obtains a medal, it would be the sixth medal won by the Spanish Winter Olympics, after Paquito’s gold, Blanca Fernández Ochoa’s bronze (Eslalom, 1992), Javier Fernández’s (Figure Skating, 2018) and Regino Hernández’s (Snowboard cross) , 2018) and the silver from the Catalan Queralt Castellet (Snowboard halfpipe, 2022).
The Olympic premiere of mountain skiing coincides with the uncertain future of ski resorts, many of them doomed to disappear due to climate change: it barely snows at low altitudes, which has boosted the popularity of skimo. For now, by dint of lungs it is still possible to find snow and solitude in the natural environment.
