Swiss twins chase new high as SkiMo debuts in Milano Cortina

ROUGEMONT, Switzerland, Jan 7 : Thomas and Robin Bussard won gold and silver in ski mountaineering at the Youth Olympics six years ago and in February will be targeting new heights when their sport makes its senior debut at Milano Cortina.

The Swiss identical twins now anxiously await a January 8 decision to find out if their year of hard work will mean that one, both, or neither of them make the cut to represent their country.

Ski mountaineering, also called SkiMo, has its history rooted in alpine military patrolling. It features an uphill ascent both on skis with skins (added to the bottom of skis for better traction), on foot (called boot packing), and a downhill skiing descent.

Though the more ‌classic individual races can take around two hours, it is the sprint races, which last around three minutes ‌per heat, that have made the Olympic cut alongside mixed gender relays.

It was in the longer, individual race, which will not feature this February, that the Bussard brothers had their success in 2020. This has meant adjusting their training since the Olympic announcement to focus more on sprint, by adding more strength training, for example.

COMPETING AS TWINS

Despite currently battling for the same Swiss quota spots, being twins competing together has a lot of advantages, Thomas says.

"When one of us is perhaps just a little bit down, the other is up, and that helps us to always maintain a fairly high level in what we do and ‍then pull the other forward," he said.

Occasionally, being twins has its disadvantages, however, like at the Solitude World Cup in December, where Robin and Thomas found themselves in the same sprint heat and went on to finish in 13th and 25th place, respectively. Their countryman Jon Kistler took