In the first year of an Olympic sport, Colorado will represent. 

That’s after Crested Butte’s Cam Smith raced to a stunning victory at the ski mountaineering World Cup at Solitude Mountain Resort in Utah. He did so alongside Anna Gibson of Jackson Hole, Wyo., the two of them forming the first-place relay team that some onlookers saw as the underdog in a skiing discipline more ingrained in Europe. 

Now, come February, Smith and Gibson will represent America in ski mountaineering’s debut at the Winter Games in Milano Cortina. 

“I wasn’t really thinking past this World Cup; through the preparation process we were just totally focused on getting the job done,” Smith said a few days after victory in Utah. “So all those realizations have trickled in slowly.” 

The realizations of an Olympic dream coming true. 

As a mountain runner, Smith has raced across some of the sport’s highest stages ー the sport he took up after moving to Colorado for college, shifting to trails from the track he ran as a teen in Illinois. Also around that time, Smith took up ski mountaineering, or skimo, as it was becoming better known in Colorado with increasingly popular races touring the state’s backcountry. 

Yes, as that track runner growing up in Rockford, Ill.., Smith had dreamed of the Olympics. 

“It just took a change of sports and 15 years of more development before it came true,” he said. 

And it took confidence, he explained ー a firm belief that Americans could keep up with skimo’s more historic powers, such as the Winter Games’ host country. Italy’s relay team finished second behind Smith and Gibson in what was America’s last chance to qualify at the World Cup on home snow in Utah. 

Read the recap at Olympics.com: “The duo proved unbeatable on a day of high stakes, high emotion and high consequence.”

North America’s quota spot was up for grabs between the U.S. and Canada, two of the 12 teams competing. On a course of multiple skinning climbs, skiing descents, gear transitions and tag-ins between teammates, Smith and Gibson finished in 32 minutes, 17.6 seconds ー more than a minute and a half better than the sixth-place Canadians. 

Along with Italy, Smith charged ahead of Switzerland, Germany and Norway en route to the finish line, where he embraced Gibson draped in the American flag. 

Back in Crested Butte, a crowd outside Smith’s home awaited him. 

“You can just feel how much it means not just to (Gibson) and I, but to everyone who has been behind us,” he said. “And not just for this past year, but really over the past decade.” 

Over the past decade of racing skimo’s international circuit and trying to raise the sport’s profile in America. This was while Smith and his national teammates longed for the sport’s Olympic day. 

“We wanted to make sure that we were part of the first Games, because we think it’s gonna be a big part of the Olympics four years from now and eight years from now in Salt Lake,” Smith said. “We know that for continued success in the future decades from now, the best thing we can do is get to the Games and start competing right away. So we didn’t want to miss out on skimo Olympics No. 1.” 

And if they did get there alongside those powerhouse Europeans and the field of 12 teams? 

“The thinking was that we would make it there and probably be fighting for 10th, 11th, 12th,” Smith said. “But I think what (Gibson) and I showed is, we’re going to chase medals. … We know that the task ahead of us is gonna be difficult. But we’re not going to participate. We’re going to chase medals.”