By Ben Church, CNN
Milan, Italy (CNN) — It’s around 102 years since the very first Winter Olympics were held in the French resort of Chamonix, but this year’s Games will be the first to feature the sport of skimo.
Short for ski mountaineering, skimo is the only sport making its debut at Milan Cortina this month, but it boasts a long and fascinating history that stretches back decades.
CNN Sports spoke to the two skimo athletes, Cam Smith and Anna Gibson, who are set to represent Team USA at the Winter Olympics this year, to discover what fans can expect from this unique event.
What are the rules?
Skimo is an energy-sapping mix of uphill climbing and downhill skiing, with athletes tasked with changing their specialist equipment depending on the section of the course they are tackling.
Within the sport, there are several disciplines, including individual races, sprints and team relays.
For this year’s Games, only the men’s and women’s sprints and the mixed relay will be included in the schedule.
The sprints are full of adrenaline, with races typically lasting around three minutes, involving one ascent and one descent. With so little margin for error, there is huge pressure on nailing the transition of equipment.
Athletes first wear skins – material that prevents skiers from slipping down snow – attached to their skis, which allows them to climb the first ascent. They then switch to ski boots to climb a short distance, before transitioning back to skis for the final uphill section.
Competitors then take the skins off their skis before slaloming down the descent to the finish line.
The relays, meanwhile, involve one man and one woman who together complete four alternate laps of the course. The relay course is slightly bigger and involves two accents and two descents per lap.
“I think what makes the sport really dynamic is that you have this uphill aerobic component, you have this downhill gravity racing component, and then the transitions in between make the racing incredibly dynamic,” Smith tells CNN Sports.
“The lead changes constantly and something is always happening, and no lead is ever safe in the race.”
Contact and frantic transitions
With so little margin for error, much focus is on the transition sections where athletes switch out their equipment.
Given the snowy conditions and fatigue levels, these are nervous moments for the athletes, with mere seconds separating winning from losing.
There are also penalties for unsportsmanlike behavior, with contact between athletes common in such a chaotic environment.
“It certainly can be physical because you’re racing for the same line, you’re trying to get ahead of the other competitors before the descent, trying to find the more advantageous place in the transition area,” Smith says.
“So it’s definitely competitive. There’s contact and there’s strategy from that component of trying to get out of that chaos and get ahead of it. You have to be strong and resilient when you are in the midst of it.
“But it’s very rare to have a penalty b