Three minutes to change history: the big moment arrives for ski mountaineering at the Games

BarcelonaIt was February 2008. On the border between Switzerland and France, at the foot of the Dents-du-Midi, a demanding World Cup ski mountaineering race, the Valerette Altiski, was taking place. That day, for the first time, a skier born in Spain triumphed over the dominant figures, those born in the Alps. That young man who defeated French, Italian, and Swiss skiers was named Kilian Jornet, the fastest on a very demanding course, which he completed in almost two hours.

18 years later, ski mountaineering, also known as skimo, It debuts as an Olympic event with three Catalans and one Andalusian with a strong chance of reaching the podiumThe Olympic event bears little resemblance to the long-distance race won by Jornet. This is a sprint course, completed in about three minutes: skis ascend approximately 700 meters uphill on a circuit where skiers must navigate around structures designed to prevent a straight run, followed by a section of stairs where they must walk while putting on their skis. This is crucial just before the descent, when they need to remove the ski skins, equipment that aids on the ascent but not on the descent. "When you take off your skis or your skins, you can lose a lot of ground," explains Oriol Cardona from Banyoles, one of the favorites. This three-minute course could change everything if Cardona, Ot Ferrer, Maria Costa, or Ana Alonso from Granada win a medal. The Spanish delegation has yet to win a medal at these Games. And Catalan sport, in more than a century, has only one Winter Olympic medal, that of Queralt Castellet in snowboard Four years ago. In the Winter Games, Spain has only won one gold medal, back in 1972 with Paquito Fernández Ochoa in alpine skiing.

The day that could change the history of Catalan sport is the culmination of years of work. To understand his current success, we must go back two decades, to when Kilian Jornet still combined ski mountaineering with running. Jornet was one of the young athletes selected to enter the high-performance ski mountaineering center founded in 1997 in the Catalan Pyrenees, thanks to the drive of Jordi Canals, the Barcelona-born mountaineer who, after participating in expeditions to Everest, gave it all up to dedicate himself to the sport.skimoa sport he had fallen in love with. "Kilian showed us the way; we quickly saw that he was special. He took us to the top tier of this sport," Canals often explains. The first results were a victory in the 2004 World Championships in the cadet category, with Jornet and Aleix Pubill as the stars. In 2007, Kilian Jornet, Mireia Miró, and Marc Pinsach triumphed in the 2007 European Junior Championships in the relay category. A key agreement with the French authorities allowed young athletes like Jornet to study and train at the center in Font-romeu, at an altitude of 1,800 meters. A first group of young Catalans crossed the border to train and improve, always with Kilian Jornet as their role model. In 2012, a young man from Banyoles, Oriol Cardona, joined the center in Font-romeu. "I remember him very young, with a great work ethic; you could see he had character," explains Jornet, who recently invited Cardona to Norway, where he lives, to train together and climb peaks, as seen in a documentary by Televisió de Catalunya. "The times I trained with him were an incredible learning experience. He shared all his firsthand knowledge with me. In terms of technique and sporting mindset, he's a genius. He's a very competitive person," says Cardona, who was already the European Junior Champion in 2014.

At that time, Oriol didn't know that theskimo It would be an Olympic sport. He didn't know if he could dedicate himself to it, so he studied Physical Activity and Sports Sciences and worked as a forestry assistant, while dedicating the summer months, like Kilian, to mountain running. A piano enthusiast, Oriol came to ski mountaineering thanks to his father, Joan, a mountain lover who has climbed Everest twice and took his children to the Pyrenees whenever he could. In fact, Joan was a national ski mountaineering champion, a sport also practiced by Nilo, Oriol's older brother.

For years, it seemed that Cardona would end up focusing on mountain running, like Kilian Jornet. But some news is going to change everything. "Knowing that ski mountaineering would be an Olympic sport was key," explains the man from Banyoles, who arrives at the Games aware that much is expected of him, because he is the reigning world champion. "If I didn't know how to handle pressure, I shouldn't be there," says the Banyoles native, who will compete again on Saturday in the doubles final with Andalusian Ana Alonso, who is also seeking a medal in the individual event and has a remarkable story of overcoming adversity. Last September, while cycling down from Sierra Nevada, she was hit by a car. Alonso tore the anterior cruciate ligament in her left knee and broke several bones. With immense effort, she has managed to reach Bormio, the same track where last year, in a World Cup event on the same circuit as the Games, Oriol Cardona was the top performer.