Twenty-five of the best ski mountaineering athletes in the United States are in Italy for this year’s International Ski Mountaineering Federation World Cup Championships. Three represent Durango.
United States Ski Mountaineering Association Director Ram Mikulas, U.S. national team coach Joe Howdyshell, and 25 of the nation’s best, ranging in discipline and age from 15 to 55 years old, are set to compete. More than half of the U.S. national team resides in Colorado, and three athletes – four-time national team member Scott Simmons, 45, his 15-year-old son, Quinn Simmons, and 29-year-old Scott Archer – will represent Durango, making this year’s championships an event worth watching.
Quinn Simmons will compete for the cadet men in the 15- to 17-year-old age group. Scott Simmons and Archer are among the senior men. Quinn is the reigning 18-and-under mountain bike national champion and also races bikes for Whole Athlete Cycling Team. He is a student at Durango High School.
This year, two regions of northeastern Italy in the Dolomites, south of the Austrian border, will host more than 300 athletes from 25 nations. The Tambre-Aplago Veneto area will hold individual and team races, while Piancavallo-Fruili Venezia Giulia will host the team relay, sprint and vertical races. The championships take place every other year, with the last occurring in 2015 in Switzerland. Opening ceremonies are scheduled for Feb. 23, with competition beginning the following day and continuing through March 2.
There will not be main network coverage despite a rapid surge in participation in the sport and the recent International Olympic Committee recognition of the ISMF and the sport of ski mountaineering.
Not to worry, where there is a will there is a way. Live event updates and coverage will be available on the @AlpagoPiancavallo17 Twitter feed and video updates will be available at ISMF Skimo YouTube channel.
The most exciting championship events are perhaps the vertical and sprint races. Racers are notorious for pushing beyond any state of hypoxia we might conjure from the comfort of our couches. Each event lasts only a few minutes. The vertical is just that, a race to the top of a 700-meter climb, and the sprint is a mini individual race that takes roughly 3 minutes to complete, with sections of skinning, a boot-pack and a descent that is, according to the ISMF, “fun off-piste skiing through powder and jumps.”
The team race pairs teammates to face more than 2,000 meters of vertical gain, a minimum of three alpine summits, a boot-pack section, via feratta and/or fixed lines, and they may even have to employ the use of ice axes and crampons. Average finishing times for top contenders are a little over two hours. U.S. athletes John Gaston and Max Taam of Aspen managed to take 15th in 2015 with a finishing time of 2:34:51, and this year they appear even stronger. The individual race follows the same format as the team event, only scaled down in distance and duration.
Finally, the team relay race is made up of teams of four for the men and teams of three for the women. Skiers race in a similar fashion to the team event but compete on a shorter circuit and take an average 15 minutes per lap.
The U.S. is brazenly taking on a centuries-old European tradition found in the military patrol races and is getting stronger every year. Ski mountaineering’s future is getting brighter. It has potential as a demonstration sport at the 2018 Winter Olympics in PyeongChang, South Korea, and for its inclusion as an official Olympic event in the Bejing 2022 Winter Olympic Games.
Durango Herald sports editor John Livingston contributed to this report.
heraldsports@durangoherald.com
