It’s been a long time coming, but ski mountaineering is debuting at the 2026 Olympic Games in Italy, and two professional trail runners, Cam Smith and Anna Gibson, are set to represent Team USA. It’s a mash-up that’ll unite fans of both sports.
Anna Gibson and Cam Smith celebrate winning the 2025 ISMF Solitude World Cup and qualifying Team USA to compete at the 2026 Olympic Games in ski mountaineering. Photo: Owen Crandall
While both are highly accomplished mountain runners — they both represented Team USA at the 2025 World Mountain Running Championships this past September, with Anna placing third and Cam 11th at the Uphill race, and the pair respectively finishing 13th and 24th in the Up and Down race — their ski mountaineering (skimo) experience couldn’t be more different. Cam is a 13-time U.S. skimo national champion who has been dreaming of the Olympics since 2021, when the International Olympic Committee announced the sport would debut at the Milano Cortina 2026 Winter Olympics. On the other hand, Anna has only a couple of skimo races on her resume to date.
It was certainly a risk to try to bring Anna onto the U.S. skimo national team less than a year before the Olympics, but Cam saw potential. Anna grew up racing on skis, both Nordic and downhill. Plus, she was arguably the best short-distance trail runner in the U.S. and one of the best in the world. Cam says of her, “It’s the running, the skiing, the killer mentality, the ability to learn new things, the really calm demeanor that she brings to the team, and positive attitude. She’s just truly the prototype athlete.”
An unlikely duo, a unique Olympic qualifying journey, and a sport’s debut at the Olympic Games already make this an iconic sports story, even before the Olympics begin.
Trail Runners and Skimo
Skimo has many similarities to trail running. In its most basic form, racers must climb uphill on skis with skins attached — which provide traction on the snow — then, at the top, take the skins off the skis and ski back down. Most races also involve a bootpack section where racers put their skis on their back and climb up a steep slope with steps cut into it. Although the ability to climb and descend quickly is incredibly important, the technical ability to transition between the uphill, downhill, and bootpack segments is also critical.
Skimo, now governed by the International Ski Mountaineering Foundation (ISMF), has a long competitive history. The ISMF administers biennial world championships and annual world cups, which have been held since 2002 and 2004, respectively. Skimo becomes an Olympic event for the first time at the 2026 Olympic Games, further elevating the competitive aspect. There’ll be three events, the women’s and men’s sprints, as well as a mixed relay.
Heading into the 2025 ISMF Solitude World Cup race, held in December 2025 just outside Salt Lake City, Utah, there were a couple of ways Team USA could earn a berth at the Olympics, but the simplest and most straightforward was to win the qualifying spot designated for a team from the Americas. To snag the spot, the U.S. would have to beat Canada on the slopes of Solitude and pass them in the 2025 World Cup rankings. There was a one-point split between the teams headed into the race.
Cam Smith putting skins on his skis during a transition at the 2025 ISMF Solitude World Cup. Photo: Owen Crandall
In the mixed relay, two team members — a woman and a man — do two laps of a course individually, trading off in between — two solo melded into one race result. Cam and Anna are incredibly different in their backgrounds and skimo experience, but as Anna puts it, “We need very different things to succeed, which is partly why we’re a great team, because we very much balance each other out.”
While Cam says that, on paper, they’re not a favorite for an Olympic medal, he doesn’t think it’s outside the realm of possibility. No one thought they’d win a World Cup the first time racing together on their way to earning that Olympic spot, either. But they did, and by a resounding 51 seconds, a huge margin in the relatively short-format race.
The Ask
Coming into 2025, Cam had been thinking about recruiting Anna onto the skimo national team to see if she could add the extra oomph needed to help the U.S. qualify for the Olympics. They’d been friends for a number of years, meeting at the 2022 Run the Rut, and Anna followed his skimo racing, saying, “I’ve known how much of a legend he is, obviously in the trail world, but also in the skimo world.”
Cam nervously planned when to ask the question, knowing it was a big ask for a pro runner like Anna to chase an arguably hairbrained idea. He was going to ask at the Sunapee Scramble in early June this past year, where they were both racing, but it was rainy. The conditions weren’t conducive to hanging out and chatting. After returning home and admitting he hadn’t made the pitch, Cam’s wife told him just to call her. Sheepishly, he replied that he’d ask at the 2025 Broken Arrow Skyrace a few weeks later, where they’d both be racing again.
Anna Gibson leads the women at the 2025 Broken Arrow Ascent, which served as the 2025 U.S. Mountain Running Championships for the Uphill discipline. Photo: iRunFar/Eszter Horanyi
They sat down after the weekend of racing, where Anna had won the Ascent and placed third in the 23k, and Cam had taken third and seventh at those same events, and Cam laid out his thoughts. Cam says, “She was letting me ramble. So I just explained to her the position we were in, how helpful she could be, that there was no guarantee she would be named to the team, no guarantee she’d be allowed to race at Solitude, no guarantee that we would then earn the spot, and no guarantee that she would be selected for it if we earned it.”
Anna was only partially surprised, saying, “I had no idea that Cam was going to give me the hard sell on this back in June, but it also didn’t feel like that crazy because I was like, ‘Yeah, we’ve talked about this before. Here we are. Me being tempted to do skimo. What else is new?’”
Cam Smith (right) chasing down Tyler McCandless for third at the 2025 Broken Arrow Ascent, which was the 2025 U.S. Mountain Running Championships for the Uphill discipline. Photo: iRunFar/Eszter Horanyi
It was ultimately Cam’s enthusiasm that convinced her to try. “Seeing Cam light up about this thing, and seeing the hope in his eyes, and just the potential of what this could be for us — I felt really enticed.” Anna goes on to say, “I had this realization that if I gave six months of my life to maybe make this thing happen and make all these people’s dreams come true and in the process have this really incredible experience myself and become an Olympian, that would be so incredible.”
Building Skills
Cam grew up in Rockford, Illinois, with running as his main sport. He says, “I really enjoyed it, but wasn’t really going anywhere with it. I didn’t have any big college opportunities.” Initially, he planned to walk on at Western State Colorado University in Gunnison, Colorado, but a series of injuries in his senior year led him to reconsider his options. Instead of running, he joined the Mountain Sports program, an umbrella organization for sports including skimo, Nordic skiing, big mountain skiing, freestyle skiing, alpine ski racing, trail running, and mountain biking. The school’s location in central Colorado made it a hotbed of outdoor mountain pursuits. He says, “I didn’t do any of them for competitive motivations. I wanted to know how to do everything because that’s like how you hang out with your friends in Gunnison.”
In 2014, his older sister, who was also a student at Western, wanted to race the Elk Mountain Grand Traverse, a skimo event where pairs travel from Crested Butte — located just up the valley from Gunnison — to Aspen, covering over 40 miles and 7,000 feet of elevation gain. They rounded up some used ski touring gear and figured out how to use it. In preparation, Cam lined up for the Irwin Guides Ski Mountaineering Race and was in last place when he ultimately DNFed. He laughs when he says, “I had a pretty inauspicious start.” Nevertheless, Cam and his sister went on to finish the Grand Traverse later that winter, solidly midpack, and Cam was in love. More racing followed, and he started doing well in the local — and competitive — Crested Butte races. Soon, he was winning his age group at bigger Colorado races, scraping together better gear through the race prizes, and learning from the strong skimo community in Gunnison and Crested Butte.
Cam Smith (in red) at the 2014 Irwin Guides race. Photo courtesy of Cam Smith.
In 2017, he was named to Team USA for the ISMF World Championships in Italy. “I was the only under-23 that wanted to go. So they were like, ‘Fine, come with us,’” he says, and quips, “I went back to finishing last place once I got to Europe.” Cam’s referring to the fact that competitive skimo is much more developed in Europe to date. By 2021, when skimo was announced as an Olympic sport for 2026, Cam was one of the top skimo racers for the U.S. and had won the Grand Traverse three times and set several course records in high-profile races in the U.S. He set his sights on the Olympics and continued to hone his craft every winter while running in the summer.
While mountain bikes were his love while in college, he says that once out of school, “I wasn’t really interested in trying to self-fund a bike racing career.” So running it was for summertime, and the 2025 season was his seventh summer of racing trails. His top finishes over the years have included multiple podiums at the Pikes Peak Marathon, fourth place at the 2025 U.S. Mountain Running Championships Up and Down race at the Sunapee Scramble, and third at the 2025 U.S. Mountain Running Championships Uphill race at the Broken Arrow Ascent. Both those national championships performances earned him spots to compete in the two disciplines for Team USA at the 2025 World Mountain Running Championships, held in September in Spain.
Cam Smith finishing in 11th at the 2025 World Mountain Running Championships Uphill race. Photo: iRunFar/Eszter Horanyi
The Multi-Modal Athlete
Meanwhile, Anna grew up in Jackson, Wyoming — an epicenter for big mountain sports — and won 17 high school state titles between cross country, track, and Nordic skiing. For a while, downhill ski racing was her main sport. Her parents exposed her to a variety of outdoor activities as she was growing up, something she credits with much of her athletic success. In 2017, she became the junior national champion in the 10k classic in Nordic skiing. She ran collegiately for the University of Washington, and among her top performances was a third place in the 1,500 meters at the 2022 Pac-12 conference championships. In 2023, she did her first skimo race, the Vertfest at Mount Bachelor in Oregon, and won. Later that year, she won the Broken Arrow Ascent and was second in the 23k, the early days of her trail running career.
Anna Gibson takes the win at the 2023 Broken Arrow Ascent. Photo: Peter Maksimow
By June of 2025, Anna was well-established in the mountain running world with a series of top results and a life as a professional runner. She was also dabbling in gravel bike racing. When Cam floated the idea of trying to earn a spot on the skimo Olympic team, she’d just won both the U.S. Mountain Running Championships Up and Down and Uphill races at the Sunapee Scramble and Broken Arrow Ascent, thereby qualifying to represent Team USA in both disciplines at the 2025 World Mountain Running Championships. With a full summer of racing already planned — both on the bike and on foot — Anna didn’t start incorporating skimo training until August. Even then, the only extra training she did outside of her running was practicing the ski transitions — ripping skins off skis and putting them back on — which she did on a yoga mat in her backyard several times a week.
A week before the 2025 World Mountain Running Championships in Spain in September, an event that she’d been targeting all year, Anna joined the U.S. skimo national team for a training camp in Italy. She says, “It was a very risky decision, but I have zero question now that going to that camp and getting to spend time with the skimo team — who are now some of my favorite people — played into me doing well at the mountain running world champs.” Anna placed third in the Uphill and 13th in the Up and Down race.
Anna Gibson finishes third at the 2025 World Mountain Running Championships Uphill race. Photo: iRunFar/Eszter Horanyi
The skimo team embraced Anna’s unconventional entrance to the sport. She says, “I showed up, and I was so self-conscious. I was like, ‘I don’t know any of the norms about this sport. I don’t know what’s cool. I don’t know anything. I’m such a noob.’” The team helped her with all the intricacies. She says, “I learned quickly, not because I have talent, but because the team was so generous with teaching me things. I literally could not have done this without them sharing all this knowledge readily with me.”
Solitude, But a Team Effort
Anna and Cam won their respective team qualifying races in November 2025 and earned their spots to race together at the 2025 ISMF Solitude World Cup in December. It was Team USA’s last chance to secure a spot at the Olympics.
Lining up, Anna had never raced a skimo mixed relay before, and this was just her third skimo race ever. But she showed up relaxed, saying, “If I had come into it with equal preparation and equal expectation as I came into the mountain running world champs, it would have felt very intense, and it would have felt like a very big stage and been a bit terrifying.” With a low-snow start to the season, Anna had little time to train on snow and practice. All Anna could do was her best on the day with the preparation she had.
Anna Gibson coming into a transition zone at the 2025 ISMF Solitude World Cup. Photo: Gracie Hinz
The women led off the first of the four-lap race. Coming into the first handoff, Anna was in fourth, just behind Team Canada. When describing it, Cam says wryly, “Fourth would have been great actually, but the problem is that we were behind Canada.” Still, Cam knew they were in a great position as he headed out on his lap. “When she was skiing up to me, she was yelling, ‘You got this.’ And I was yelling back at her, ‘That was awesome.’ We both knew that we were in the middle of a great race, even if we weren’t in the front yet.” Cam took the lead during his first lap, and Anna found herself leading an ISMF World Cup race with a substantial gap on her second lap. She maintained the lead, and when Cam finished the fourth and final lap, they had a 51-second advantage on second-place Italy, and a ticket to the 2026 Olympic Games. Anna says, “I had not even considered the possibility that Cam and I could win the world cup race.”
Cam Smith descending ahead of Team Canada at the 2025 ISMF Solitude World Cup. Photo: Gracie Hinz
Trail to the Olympic Games
The mixed relay is a team event, but it’s also very much two individual efforts, and Anna and Cam are approaching their final preparations in different ways.
Cam is now in Europe to race and train, and will be there through the Olympics. Anna, meanwhile, decided to stay home in Wyoming for most of January, saying that after a summer and fall of non-stop racing, “I was just feeling very overwhelmed by the idea of going to Europe for two months, living out of a suitcase, and having all of this be a completely new experience. That just did not sound like the best way for me to show up to the Olympics feeling my best.” They talk and text each other frequently, sharing their individual experiences, very much a team. Anna appreciates the team aspect, saying, “When people out and about are congratulating me, I get to say, ‘We are so excited.’ And that just feels really different than saying. ‘I am excited.’ I am proud to do it with another person, and not only Cam, but it took such a team effort to qualify and to give us this opportunity. It feels even more special to share.”
The 2025 ISMF Solitude World Cup mixed relay podium (left to right): 2. Italy, 1. USA, 3. Switzerland. Photo: Owen Crandall
The two will meet up in Spain at the end of January for an ISMF World Cup event and race together a final time before the Olympics start on February 6. Neither is worried about not training together in the lead-up to the Olympic Games. Anna explains, “The best thing that you can do for your teammate is understand what kind of energy you need to bring for them and be there more in an emotional sense. And fortunately, Cam and I have known each other for a long time. I know what Cam needs to approach a race feeling good. I know what to say to him to make him feel strong and confident.”
Regardless of how the Olympics ultimately shake out, Anna and Cam get to be part of history at the first Olympic mixed relay skimo race. And perhaps, a few years down the road, trail running will also have its chance to shine on the Olympic stage, and we’ll see the pair again with shoes on their feet instead of skis.
Call for Comments
- Are you a trail runner who also races skimo?
- How cool is it to see this pair representing the U.S. at the Olympics?!
- Do you know of any other runners competing in this year’s Olympic Games?
