BORMIO, Italy (AP) — Once Thibault Anselmet reached the top of the last climb, he began to raise his hand.
Because a gold medal was simply all downhill from there.
Emily Harrop and Anselmet jumped out to a lead and never looked back in combining to win the mixed relay for France on Saturday as part of ski mountaineering's Olympic debut at the Milan Cortina Games.
Each athlete completed two laps, tagging the other after every loop. Harrop and Anselmet finished the Stelvio course in a time of 26 minutes, 57.44 seconds, holding off the Swiss team of Marianne Fatton and Jon Kistler by 11.86 seconds. Spanish racers Ana Alonso Rodriguez and Oriol Cardona Coll captured the bronze.
Ski mountaineering, which is called “skimo” for short, was voted into the Olympic program in 2021. The individual sprint races crowned the sport's first Olympic champions — Fatton and Cardona Coll — on Thursday with the falling snow adding another element to the historic day.
Harrop grabbed the early lead on the first lap and the French kept pushing the lung-searing pace. So confident was Anselmet that he started celebrating well before the finish line — at the top of the course, a mini-celebration, and midway down the descent, an arms-raised celebration. Of course, at the finish, a true celebration.
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American racers Anna Gibson and Cameron Smith took fourth.
It was a different course setup than the sprint race, with an extra ascent and descent adding to the already difficult challenge. The mixed teams alternated between female and male racers over four laps. The course length was listed as 1,410 meters (4,626 feet) with the total ascent around 137 meters (450 feet).
The racers started on an ascent before a descent into the transition zone. They put on their “skins” — a piece of fabric on the bottom of the skis for better uphill traction — as they navigated a diamond-shaped pattern that led them to a set of stairs. They stowed their skis on their backs and ran up the steps in ski boots. Then they put their skis back on and scaled another uphill climb before taking the skins off again and flying downhill.
Once they reached the “handover” zone, they tagged their partner to begin another lap. Fatton cut the lead heading into the final lap but Anselmet found another gear to restore the advantage.
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