Sports
Ski mountaineering ready for Olympic debut in Italian Alps
Athletes Tatjana Paller and Finn Hoesch from the German Skimo national team at a media day as part of their preparations for the Olympics in Gurgl, Austria, November 10, 2025. Ski mountaineering will be included in the upcoming Winter Games for the first time BORMIO, Italy — Ski mountaineering is ready for its Olympic debut, starting with the men’s and women’s sprint events on Thursday. It does so in a mountain region rich with the sport’s history.
HOW IT WORKS
Ski mountaineering, known as SkiMo, is a sport that combines ascending up mountainous terrain and skiing back down. The condensed version, the sprint event, will feature at the Winter Games, taking around three minutes per heat.
With three rounds, from heats to finals, and 36 athletes competing in total, each ski mountaineer will have to complete their race in three parts: an uphill trek on skis with “skins” underneath which grip the snow, a walk up stairs on foot where the skis are stowed into a backpack, known as boot-packing, and finally a ski down to the finish line, which might include some jumps or rolls built into the snow.
With the transitions between each stage being a key part of winning the competition, it is a race against the clock as the first athlete across the finish line wins.
There will also be a mixed gender relay with one man and one woman per team competing together to complete two rounds each on Saturday.
LONG HISTORY, FAMILIAL TIES IN BORMIO
Not only does SkiMo’s history trace back hundreds of years to Alpine military training, it also has a lot of rich history specific to its Olympic host location.
“It’s kind of where ski mountaineering racing came to life,” Michela Martinelli, sport manager of ski mountaineering for Milan Cortina, said of the Alpine region surrounding Bormio, which boasts many successful SkiMo athletes and a leading ski manufacturer for the sport.
SkiMo evolved largely in the 1980s when recreational races started to appear, its first World Championships being held in 2002 in Serre Chevalier, France. In 2022 it was adopted into the Youth Olympic Games before being added for Milan Cortina.
Two of the competing Italian athletes, Giulia Murada and Michele Boscacci, are from the surrounding region and both have their fathers helping to prepare the Olympic course.
Their fathers, Ivan Murada and Graziano Boscacci, are themselves decorated ski mountaineers. Together they won the team race at the first ever World Championship, playing a large part in Italy’s success in the sport.
WHO TO WATCH OUT FOR
France’s Emily Harrop will be defending her world No. 1 ranking in the women’s sprint from last year while Spain’s Oriol Cardona Coll will be defending his own.
They face tough competition from racers such as Switzerland’s Marianne Fatton and Jon Kistler, and France’s Thibault Anselmet, who won the most recent World Cup men’s sprint race earlier in February in Spain.
The French duo, Harrop and Anselmet, who won the mixed relay at the same event, will be competing not only against Spain and Switzerland but also against married couple Michele Boscacci and Alba de Silvestro from Italy and hopeful newcomers Anna Gibson and Cam Smith from the United States.
–Reuters, special to Field Level Media
Sports
Are the Pittsburgh Pirates Finally Ready to Contend in 2026?
The Pittsburgh Pirates have been one of the worst teams in baseball over the last decade. They have the 5th-lowest winning percentage in baseball and have more 100-loss seasons (two) than winning seasons (one) over that period.
Bob Nutting is one of the worst owners in sports, and because of that, the Pirates are among the lowest spenders in the league. To go along with a cheap owner, they’ve been mostly incompetent from an organizational point of view, squandering the actual talent they’ve had come through PNC Park.
But it sort of feels like the Pirates are ready to be a real baseball team.
If you want to talk about the Pirates, it starts with Paul Skenes. He leads a rotation that should be one of the better position groups in the National League. Bubba Chandler should be right behind Skenes in the rotation, and many scouts feel he has number one pitcher upside to him. He had some struggles in his first few appearances at the major league level, but in his final three starts last season, he threw 16.2 innings, allowing only two runs.
Braxton Ashcraft and Mitch Keller will also be featured in a Pirates rotation that should keep the team competitive on the mound. In the bullpen, the Pirates added Gregory Soto to a group of relief pitchers needing some depth.
They’ll also lean on Dennis Santana, who had one of the best chase rates in baseball last season, Carmen Mlodzinski, who’s been quite consistent the last few years, and a lot of other arms that come with many questions. The bullpen never had much help on the offensive side of things the last few years, but the Pirates actually attempted to add some quality bats to their lineup.
O’Neil Cruz and Bryan Reynolds had career-worst seasons in the outfield last year for Pittsburgh, but I’m betting on them to bounce back with more protection around them.
The Pirates got aggressive this offseason, bringing in Brandon Lowe, Marcell Ozuna, Jhostynxon Garcia, and Ryan O’Hearn.
Lowe and O’Hearn are coming off solid All-Star seasons and should provide immediate help to the Pirates’ lineup. Ozuna is coming off a bit of a down season, but he had hit 79 homers over the prior two seasons. I like them taking a risk on Ozuna on a relatively cheap one-year deal, just to see if he can bounce back.
Lastly, Garcia had been excelling in the Boston farm system, but it was unlikely he was ever going to break through a crowded Red Sox outfield. Pittsburgh had to flip Johan Oviedo, but I still think this was a pretty savvy move for the Pirates.
The lineup will also feature infielder Spencer Horwitz, who, after struggling with injuries at the beginning of the season, finished the year strong and generated a team-leading 118 OPS+ last year for the Pirates.
However, the biggest question facing the Pirates is what they will do with Konnor Griffin. He’s seen as the best prospect in the sport, and if they’re actually serious about contending this year, he will start the season as the team’s shortstop.
Griffin is a 6’4” 19-year-old who’s built like a 10-year veteran. He murdered the ball at all three levels of minor league baseball he played in last season; he’s a plus defender and a plus athlete. He’s the no-doubt hitting prospect that the Pirates have been needing for so long now. Adding him to a lineup that could feature 5-6 above-average hitters, this team could be serious right now.
The Pirates are currently +800 to win the NL Central and +425 to make the playoffs. It might be time to trust the Pirates, because they’re going to be contenders in 2026.
Sports
Report: Seahawks unlikely to apply franchise tag to Kenneth Walker III
Feb 8, 2026; Santa Clara, CA, USA; Seattle Seahawks running back Kenneth Walker III (9) carries the ball against the New England Patriots during the fourth quarter in Super Bowl LX at Levi’s Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Darren Yamashita-Imagn Images The Seattle Seahawks unlikely are to apply the franchise tag to Super Bowl LX MVP Kenneth Walker III, according to a report by ESPN.
Walker, who ran for 135 yards in Seattle’s 29-13 Super Bowl victory over the New England Patriots, is not being prioritized as a retention piece, per ESPN. The Seahawks reportedly are prioritizing other pending free agents and likely will work on an extension for star receiver Jaxon Smith-Njigba.
Walker, 25, would be given a one-year, $14.1 million contract if the franchise tag was applied to him. The former second-round pick is at the end of his four-year rookie contract which saw the Seahawks pay him a total of $8.4 million.
After rushing for 1,027 yards and five touchdowns in the regular season, Walker amassed 313 yards and four scores over the Seahawks’ three playoff games. He took over the majority of the reps in the wake of Zach Charbonnet’s season-ending knee injury sustained in Seattle’s divisional-round win over San Francisco.
Over four seasons with the Seahawks, Walker has rushed for 3,555 yards and 29 touchdowns while catching 133 passes for 1,005 yards and two more scores in 58 regular-season games (54 starts).
–Field Level Media
Sports
Super-vet and rookie combine for US in search of bobsleigh gold
Feb 16, 2026; Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy; Elana Meyers Taylor of the United States celebrates after winning the women’s bobsleigh monobob competition during the Milano Cortina 2026 Olympic Winter Games at Cortina Sliding Centre. Mandatory Credit: Michael Madrid-Imagn Images CORTINA D’AMPEZZO, Italy — Medal-laden Elana Meyers Taylor is in her fifth Olympics while Jadin O’Brien had barely seen, let alone touched, a bobsleigh until late last year, but this week that unlikely U.S. pairing will be targeting gold in the Two-Woman event in Cortina.
Meyers Taylor, 41, arrived with two silver and two bronze medals from the Two-Woman event, starting in 2010.
She got another silver with the first running of Monobob four years ago and then, on Monday, finally topped the podium with a dramatic Monobob gold.
There is nothing she does not know about the sport.
The same cannot be said for O’Brien, who was competing at the USA Track & Field championships as a heptathlete last August with no thought of getting into a bobsleigh.
That was until Meyers Taylor, always on the lookout for the sort of powerful sprinters necessary for success, contacted her.
“It has been a whirlwind,” O’Brien, 23, told journalists in Cortina ahead of her event that begins on Friday.
“I finished my last track meet August 2nd and started training for bobsled August 4th. Ten days after that, I was in Lake Placid doing the rookie camp. Two weeks after, I made the World Cup team and now we are in Europe.
“I could never have predicted my life would turn out this way, but I’m incredibly grateful, and I’ve loved every second of it.”
Not quite every second.
SPECTACULAR CRASH
A month ago, O’Brien and Meyers Taylor were involved in a spectacular crash in St. Moritz, Switzerland that the veteran pilot described as one of the most violent she had ever seen.
“It was not easy getting back on the line to race in St. Moritz after that,” O’Brien said. “I was in a lot of pain, I couldn’t really move and we were both very, very beat up.
“But in a weird way I think it brought us together as a pair. I decided to put my body on the line for ‘E’ because I felt that I had the best chance of getting her in a top 10 finish. We did place in the top 10 and I think that was a testament to who we are as athletes and what we’re capable of doing together.
“Honestly, the sky is the limit for both of us.”
At the start of the Games, Meyers Taylor sat alongside O’Brien looking more like a proud parent than a teammate and said that though she was going all out for the gold that had proved just out of reach at four Olympics, her vast experience has given her something of a Zen approach.
“It would mean everything and it would mean nothing all at the same time,” the mother of two deaf sons said of the prospect of topping the podium.
“I wanted to approach this sport with joy and integrity. I am going to give it everything I’ve got and see what happens, but, at the end of the day, a gold medal is not going to change who I am.”
Unchanged or not, she now has that gold, saying the fact she wanted, rather than needed it helped her achieve it and now she will be pouring all her experience and energy into helping O’Brien get the same feeling.
One of the women trying to spoil that dream is teammate Kaillie Humphries, twice a gold medalist in the event for Canada but now representing the U.S. at the age of 40.
Germany remains the favorite, in the form of Laura Nolte and Deborah Levi, who were crowned World Cup champions last month after winning five of the seven races.
Nolte had looked nailed on for gold after three runs in the Monobob final but wobbled on her last run to drop to silver and will be desperate to make amends.
–Reuters, special to Field Level Media
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