Ski mountaineering and telemark: up and down, and the free heel.

Ski mountaineering: an ISMF sport

Ski mountaineering is not among the FIS disciplines listed in article 2.2 of the FIS Statutes (Edition 2026). Its international body is the International Ski Mountaineering Federation (ISMF). The Olympic Council of Asia reported on 16 March 2025 that Uzbekistan and Pakistan had joined, taking the ISMF to 55 national members, an ISMF figure as the OCA relayed it. According to Wikipedia, the ISMF's constitutional assembly met on 27 February 2008 at Champery, Switzerland, and it grew out of a ski mountaineering body of the UIAA; the ISMF's own site was not reached, so that is unconfirmed.

The rules below come from the ISMF Rules & Guidelines 2025-26, "in force as of 30 October 2025". The copy read for this site is hosted by the German Alpine Club (Deutscher Alpenverein), an ISMF national member, rather than by the ISMF itself.

Race types (ISMF Rules & Guidelines 2025-26)

The ISMF lists sprint, vertical, individual, team, relay and mixed relay races, plus the vertical kilometer and vertical half kilometer. The figures for seniors are:

The Olympic formats

The ISMF Rules for Olympic Games 2025-26, part of the same document, set out the two Olympic events:

• Sprint (art. 60.1): three heats of six, two semi-finals of six and one final of six. The top three in each heat and the three fastest losers go through, then the top two in each semi-final and the two fastest losers.
• Mixed relay (art. 61): a final phase only; the woman of each team starts, and teams line up six to a starting line.
• Qualification (art. 58): only athletes with an ISMF Elite licence from an ISMF Full National Member count for the Olympic ranking lists.

Kit the rules require

The ISMF's compulsory equipment table for team and individual races includes, among other items, a helmet, an avalanche transceiver, a shovel, a probe and a survival blanket; for sprint, relay and vertical races some items depend on the event. The transceiver must conform to ETSI EN 300 718 at 457 kHz. These items are named here only because the rule names them; how they are used is taught on avalanche courses, not on this site. The standards are on avalanche equipment standards.

At the Olympics: 2026 and 2030

NBC Olympics reports that ski mountaineering made its Olympic debut at Milano Cortina 2026 with three events at Bormio: the men's sprint, the women's sprint and the mixed relay. NBC Sports, seen in a search summary, says it was added under the rule letting a host propose sports for its own Games.

Sources disagree on how many events had been planned. A search summary of the IOC's 2022 programme release describes five ski mountaineering events (individual and sprint for each gender plus a mixed relay) and an athlete quota of 48, while the Games held three. How the programme changed between 2022 and 2026 was not traced.

For 2030, NBC Sports reported on 25 June 2026 that the full IOC membership approved ski mountaineering as an additional sport two weeks after the Executive Board did, and that organisers plan five events, adding women's and men's individual races to the three of 2026, with the final event list still to be set. Another report, seen only in a search summary, mentions relays as the additions instead. The IOC's own programme will settle it.

Telemark: a FIS discipline

Telemark is a FIS discipline (code TM) in the Statutes 2026 (art. 2.2), and FIS lists telemark among its World Championships. It was not on the Milano Cortina 2026 programme. FIS's rules are the "ICR Regulations for Telemark, Edition 2026 - Spring", which have special-rule sections for telemark giant slalom, classic, sprint, parallel slalom, parallel sprint and team parallel sprint (arts. 1800 to 2300).

What a telemark race contains (ICR Telemark 2026)

• Components (art. 1701.1): up to five, meant to test all-round skiing. A race may contain jumps, a 360-degree banked turn, a cross-country (skating) section, whoops and a super-telemark. Zones where telemark turns are not compulsory are marked with gates carrying yellow panels.
• Time split (arts. 1701.2 and 1701.5): the telemark section is usually 60% to 70% of race time, except in giant slalom, and the cross-country section 30% to 40%, with no required style in the cross-country part.
• Jumps (art. 1701.3): one or two per course, on a hill suited to jumps of more than 5 m and not over 30 m. Where the red line after a jump is set close to it, racers must land in the telemark position or take a one-second penalty.
• Judging (arts. 1711 and 1712): the rules provide technique judges and penalties. Penalty values beyond the landing rule were not extracted for this site.

The name comes from a place. The Sondre Norheim site says the turns take their names from Telemark, Norheim's home county, and Christiania, the old name of Oslo; the story is on Norway and Sondre Norheim. This site does not describe how a telemark turn is made.