By Marleen Kaesebier
BORMIO, Italy, Feb 21 (Reuters) – France’s world champions Emily Harrop and Thibault Anselmet won the inaugural Olympic ski mountaineering mixed relay title on Saturday after leading from the first lap, making up for the disappointment of not winning the individual sprint titles.
They took 26 minutes 57.44 seconds to traverse up and down the 1.41 km course. The pair won medals in their respective sprint events on Thursday, but Harrop had to settle for silver in the women’s and Anselmet bronze in the men’s.
Switzerland’s Marianne Fatton and Jon Kistler took the silver medal spot 11.86 seconds behind, with Spain’s Ana Alonso Rodriguez and Oriol Cardona Coll in bronze position.
OUT FOR REVENGE
Harrop had an extra incentive to win her race after being beaten to gold by Fatton on Thursday. “It completely pushed me,” she said, “I didn’t want to let go of this second opportunity.”
Once she moved ahead in the first lap, Harrop knew she had to “resist, resist, resist, stay clean on all my transitions.”
Anselmet was also keen to improve on bronze and celebrated on the final lap before he had even crossed the finish line.
“I said in my head, it’s okay, you can celebrate with the people at the top,” he said of seeing the others behind him and taking a moment to soak it up with the cheering crowd at the top of the slope before making his descent to victory.
HOW IT WORKS
It was all or nothing as one of the last Winter Games events saw all 12 teams start at the same time for a final SkiMo race.
With one team per nation, made up of one woman and one man, each athlete had two laps each to battle it out with the other teams – and build on their counterpart’s position.
The women first took to the starting line to ascend 135 metres in total and descend the same distance.
Slightly longer than the sprint course, the laps take around seven minutes, compared to three minutes in the sprint race, with athletes handing over to each other between laps.
Competitors must run uphill on skis with “skins” for grip, climb a set of stairs in boots with skis strapped to their backs and ski downhill through a short slalom course, with transitions in between playing a crucial role in times.
SURPRISING FOURTH FOR THE U.S.
Spain, who were the only medal-winning team that did not consistently hold their place, received a three-second penalty for not completing a transition in the allocated space, but that did not affect their final placing.
Not knowing at the time how much the penalty would be, Cardona Coll said it pushed him to create a bigger gap with other men in the race. “I had to push a lot,” he said.
The U.S. team of Anna Gibson and Cam Smith finished a creditable fourth, with Italian married couple Alba de Silvestro and Michele Boscacci, who got the loudest cheers, coming fifth.
Smith said he and Gibson may have been underdogs but they proved themselves. “Everything we’ve done has shocked the world from getting here to being competitive, to vaulting all the way to fourth. I think it shows that we’re capable of anything.”
(Reporting by Marleen Kaesebier in Bormio; Editing by Andrew Cawthorne and Ken Ferris)
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