Spain’s Oriol Cardona Coll won the men’s ski mountaineering sprint in Bormio, becoming the first male Olympic champion in the sport and ending his country’s 54-year wait for a Winter Games gold medal. Nikita Filippov, competing as an Individual Neutral Athlete, took silver, while France’s Thibault Anselmet earned bronze.

Cardona Coll arrived as one of the leading contenders. A two-time world champion, he had been the top-ranked sprint athlete during the 2024–25 season. The Olympic event, however, demanded more than raw climbing or descending speed. Its compact course required racers to move repeatedly between uphill skiing, carrying their skis on foot and a final downhill section. Efficiency during those equipment changes proved decisive.

In the six-man final, Cardona Coll led during the first uphill portion before Swiss racers Arno Lietha and Jon Kistler moved ahead around the diamond section. Kistler appeared well positioned until the boot-pack transition, where he struggled to attach his skis to his pack. The delay gave the Spaniard an opening.

Cardona Coll accelerated on the stairs as Lietha and Filippov stumbled, then handled the next change cleanly. At the summit, he rapidly deployed his skis, removed the climbing skins and committed to the descent. The sequence converted a contested race into a historic victory. He raised his arms after crossing the finish line.

The gold followed a qualification path that showed both Cardona Coll’s speed and the discipline’s narrow margins. In his opening heat, he led his six-athlete group in 2 minutes, 37.96 seconds, the fastest mark across the 18-man field. Fellow Spaniard Ot Ferrer Martinez qualified behind him, while France’s Pablo Giner Dalmasso advanced in third.

The semifinal was less straightforward. Kistler posted 2:34.93 to win their race after gaining time in a transition where Cardona Coll, normally strong in that phase, encountered difficulty. Cardona Coll nevertheless recorded the heat’s second-fastest time, 1.17 seconds behind the Swiss racer, and secured his final place. Anselmet advanced as one of the fastest competitors outside the automatic qualifying positions.

The other semifinal was won by Lietha in 2:33.79. Filippov made a late push to pass Ferrer Martinez and qualify directly, while the Spaniard advanced as a lucky loser. Those results assembled a final containing several of the world’s strongest sprint specialists.

Cardona Coll’s eventual win highlighted how quickly momentum can change in ski mountaineering sprint racing. Kistler’s earlier transition speed had separated him in the semifinal; in the medal race, a problem in the same phase opened the route to gold for Cardona Coll. The Spaniard then executed the remaining technical tasks without surrendering the advantage.

Beyond the individual result, the victory ended a national drought stretching back more than half a century. It also placed Spain at the front of a new Olympic discipline on the day the first men’s ski mountaineering sprint medals were awarded.