After making its Olympic debut with the sprint race on Thursday, Feb. 19, skimo was back with its second and final event: the mixed relay. Both the sprint and the relay share some elements—three distinct uphill sections and a skier-cross style downhill—but while the sprint lasts three minutes per race, the relay lasts almost half an hour.
The mixed relay format was introduced to the World Cup circuit in 2022. Each team consists of a man and a woman who each do two laps of the course. On the Olympic course, this totals approximately 450 feet of climbing per team, split between the zigzagging diamonds, forced bootpack stairs and an uphill sprint section. Unlike the sprint, which is a single climb and descent, a lap on the mixed relay has two climbs and two descents. Each team makes a total of 23 sub-10-second transitions throughout the race.
Teams for the mixed were relay pre-qualified on the World Cup. Americans Anna Gibson and Cameron Smith secured their Olympic spot on Dec. 6, 2025, when they took home the United States’ first Skimo World Cup win at Utah’s Solitude Mountain Resort. Gibson is a decorated mountain runner and former alpine ski racer who is new to the sport, while Smith is a skimo veteran.
Sprint silver medalist Emily Harrop took an early lead on the first ascent. A fumbled transition cost Harrop individual sprint gold and she was determined not to let another win slip through her fingers. By the time she tagged in French teammate, sprint bronze-medalist Thibault Anselmet, she had a commanding nine-second lead over the second-place Swiss team, made up of sprint gold-medalist Marianne Fatton and Jon Kistler. Italians Alba de Silvestro and Michele Boscacci were in third, and Gibson and Smith were in fifth.
By the top of the first climb, Smith dropped to seventh in a tight race with Austria and Germany. Smith moved up a position to sixth thanks to a slew of clean transitions. By the end of his first lap, the Americans were in fourth.
As Harrop pulled away on her second lap, Spaniard Ana Alonso Rodriguez and Fatton were neck-in-neck on their second ascent of the diamonds. Gibson lurked just behind in fourth, with de Silvestro chasing her down. Despite being passed by de Silvestro and then dropping a pole on the bootpack, Gibson was able to overtake her Italian competitor with a quick transition.
By the final lap, Switzerland was within 1.3 seconds of France. While they battled it out for gold, Spain, Italy and the U.S. fought for the final podium spot. Gibson was in third at the end of her final lap. Alonso Rodriguez moved out of the transition zone, crossing the line before reapplying her skins and tagging in teammate Oriol Cardona Coll. They were issued a three-second penalty.
Despite Kistler hot on his trail, Anselmet was able to hold onto the French lead and secure gold. Team Switzerland came in second, with Spain beating the United States by just 12.49 seconds, after the three-second penalty was added. With a gold and bronze for Cardon Coll and Alonso Rodriguez in the sprint, that leaves Spain as the only team to medal in every skimo event of the games.
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