Say no to skimo.
Then, over the last few days, I actually watched Olympic skimo, which consists of people sprinting up a mountain with skis on, changing out of their skis, sprinting up the mountainIt gives me no joy to inform you that, as it turns out, Olympic skimo is boring and bad.
The fact that you’d insult me with that question means that you did not watch a single second of Olympic skimo. Here’s a video—check it out, I guess.The races were confusing to watch. The course layout seemed arbitrary. As unfun as it was to watch the competitors scoot uphill, it was even less fun to watch them fiddle with their equipment. Then, the downhill skiing part of the course was so unprepossessing that it looked like something I could complete without incident. And I stink at skiing!Max Valverde, tried his best to make the races come alive. He failed, just as he failed to get a deal onI am man enough to admit that I was wrong about skimo. Yes, I botched this one. Sue me. I was shocked, however, to see a handful of my Olympic-commentating peers pretend—or, even worse, sincerely believe—that Olympic skimo was fun and good., inaccurately, in his otherwise excellent daily Olympics newsletter. “The races were exciting and the crowd was hyped. And most importantly for me, a Weird Sports fan: It was weird as hell!” You know what else is weird as hell? The directorial filmography of Crispin Glover. Should watching Crispin Glover movies also be an Olympic sport? Huh, Rodger??? that appeared in the 2018 Pyeongchang Games. In those rankings, Nordic combined came in last, and deservedly so. That sport, which combines ski jumping and cross-country skiing into one big, boring package, is inherently inessential. In fact, Nordic combined, which is the only Winter Olympic sport that doesn’t include female competitors, is so blah that the IOC is considering removing it from the Olympic program for 2030.Back in 2018, I judged all those winter sports based on watchability, aesthetics, centrality to the history of the Olympics, and miscellaneous intangibles. Add them all together, and you get that sport’s WHAM Factor. Skimo hasLet’s start with watchability. The individual skimo events were only watchable because it happened to be snowing during the men’s and women’s races, and it is very soothing to watch snow fall against a Alpine backdrop. The skies were unfortunately clear during the mixed team relay events, which meant that skimo’s inherent unwatchability was all too plainly visible. The barrier to casual skimo viewership is high, in no small part because the Olympic course is not designed intuitively. Unlike slopestyle skiing and snowboarding, in which the different sections of the course lead riders to perform different styles of tricks, a casual viewer would have no way of knowing how or if the various aspects of the skimo layout require different tests of an athlete’s skill. Indeed, if that casual viewer were to watch the race with the sound off, they would likely mistake it for some sort of odd punishment, perhaps one that had been assigned by the International Olympic Committee to Olympians who had been deemed jerks., it seems likely that skimo made it into the Milan Cortina Games only because the host nation, Italy, is pretty good at it. France is pretty good at skimo too, which could mean that the sport will stick around through 2030. But France is good at a lot of-style cabaret. Can’t the French quickly come up with some hybrid sport that involves, say, jumping off a ski lift while singing a Jacques Brel song? That sport would also be very stupid, but it would have the benefit of not being skimo.Now, let’s talk aesthetics, but only briefly, because it’s self-evident that there is nothing beautiful about skimo. First, the athletes sort of waddle uphill, in the manner of the zany chase sequences made famous by Benny Hill. (As I watched them waddle, I was hearing “Then, there are the various wardrobe changes. There is nothing inspiring about watching people fumble with their skis and their bindings, and every competitor in Olympic skimo was always eitherfumbling with their skis and bindings. You can talk about “transition zones” and call these portions of the race “very technical,” as Valverde did on the Olympics broadcast. But those of us who were unfortunate enough to watch know what we saw: Because the course was so short and the skiing so unchallenging—that hill looked to be at—these equipment “transitions” decided who won and lost. Essentially, the Olympics just awarded a bunch of medals for changing in and out of skis.Finally, when it comes to miscellaneous factors, I don’t want to disparage the skimo athletes, who clearly worked hard to reach the pinnacle of their sport. But indulge me in a thought exercise here. The Olympic sport that skimo most resembles is cross-country skiing, right? If any of the skimo athletes were to enter a cross-country event, I suspect they would finish near the back of the pack. Conversely, if, say, Jessie Diggins or Johannes Høsflot Klaebo had signed up for skimo, I could easily see them winning a medal even if they knew nothing about it.Now, to be fair, the version of skimo we saw in the Olympics—skimo sprint—is a bastardized version of the sport. Skimo events can last for hours, involve traversing entire mountains, and test the limits of an athlete’s endurance—not just their skill at stripping and stowing their gear. Look at this clip from a skimo World Cup race:something that I’d like to see at the Olympics, sort of a rugged and vertiginous wintry marathon. However, I must render my judgment not on the skimo event we deserved but on the skimo event we got, which was, again, bad.Sure, we could try to fix skimo in advance of the 2030 Games. But honestly, why take the risk? We should eliminate this entire enterprise from the Olympics, just to be safe—and not just for future Winter Games, but retroactively, too. This would mean memory-holing the 2026 skimo program entirely, and retracting the medals that just got awarded. Spain will probably fight this decision, given that Oriol Cardona Coll’s men’s sprint gold was that proud nation’sGoodbye forever, Olympic ski mountaineering. And skimo athletes, please stow your skins neatly and take all your equipment with you, lest it influence any children to take up this cursed pastime. We need to keep those kids focused on practicing for the 2030 debut of
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