The French Emily Harrop and Thibault Anselmet were crowned Olympic champions on Saturday in the mixed ski mountaineering relay in Bormio at the Olympic Games in Cortina, Italy. They bring a 21st medal to the French delegation, the seventh in gold.
Published on: 02/21/2026 - 2:02 p.m. Modified on: 02/21/2026 - 2:26 p.m.
Emily Harrop and Thibault Anselmet were crowned Olympic champions on Saturday February 21 in Bormio in the mixed ski mountaineering relay and gave France a 21st medal at the Milan Cortina Olympics, the 7th in gold.
Read alsoEmily Harrop and Thibault Anselmet offer two medals to France in ski mountaineering
Respectively in silver and bronze during their individual event on Thursday for the big debut of ski mountaineering at the Olympic Games, Harrop and Anselmet were in the lead from start to finish to beat the Swiss duo (Marianne Fatton and Jon Kistler) and the Spanish duo.
The two Frenchmen, big favorites on Saturday, assured that they had "a little revenge to take" after their results on Thursday in the sprint (individual event) and that they were ready to fight to win the "best medal" in the mixed relay.
Double reigning world champions in the discipline (2023, 2025), Harrop and Anselmet led the race from start to finish on Saturday in this format longer than the sprint, where each torchbearer respectively completes two loops in an imposed order (woman-man-woman-man), each loop itself being composed of two phases of ascent and two descents with the technical transitions that this implies (removing the skins, putting them back on, putting on, taking off, etc.).
Harrop took the lead from the first seconds of the race to complete the first stint with a comfortable margin of around ten seconds which Anselmet somehow managed to keep during his first pass.
During the third loop, Harrop increased his lead, with almost 30 seconds of margin over his pursuers but gave himself a big scare by visibly losing a lot of time during a transition, and Anselmet finally set off for the last lap with less than two seconds ahead of his Swiss pursuer.
Triple winner of the big globe in ski mountaineering, the 28-year-old Savoyard did not panic and managed to widen the gap. At the top of the last climb, he allowed himself to raise his arms in victory even before the final descent towards the finish, where Harrop was waiting to throw himself into his arms.
The French became the first Olympic champions in the mixed relay in ski mountaineering, a sport which made its Olympic debut at the Milan Cortina Games.
They bring France a 21st medal at these Winter Games in Milan Cortina, and a 7th gold medal.
With AFP
Keywords associated with the article
The content you are trying to access does not exist or is no longer available.
