Emily Harrop won the sprint race during the second 2025-26 Ski Mountaineering World Cup event in Courchevel, while Axelle Gachet-Mollaret conquered the vertical event. Margot Ravinel remained in the lead of the sprint World Cup classification.
by Maciej Jackiewicz
Thursday – Sprint race
The first Ski Mountaineering World Cup race of 2026 was the sprint, which took place on the course just next to the famous ski jumping hills. Just after the start and the classical diamond section, the skiers had to run uphill to the first transition zone, where they took off their skis and run up the 65 very steep stairs, before putting on the skis again to climb further up. Then, in the last transition zone they took off their skins and concluded the run with a downhill. Unlike the men’s qualifying, the women’s time trial saw some big upsets. Marianna Jagerčíková, who finished fourth in Solitude, did not make the cut with a 36th best time. Two talented Chinese skiers – Cidan Yuzhen and Quzhen Suolang were out in qualifying as well, finishing 31st and 37th respectively.
The heats, also called the quarterfinals, began and from the very beginning they were full of emotions. In the second heat we saw three very good athletes: Giulia Murada, Marianne Fatton and Alba De Silvestro. The first two were able to advance further, with De Silvestro, who is not a sprint specialist, ending her Thursday appearance in the heats stage. In one of the biggest stories of the heats, in heat three Eva Matějovičová of Czechia originally finished in second, but after the run she received a 30-second time penalty for losing a pole and finishing without it. This granted a semifinal appearance for Maria Costa Díez. The last heat was the most equal one, as with great pace all top four skiers from it qualified for the semifinals.
Semifinal one started off with the duo of Emily Harrop and Giulia Murada leading the race, with Marianne Fatton just behind. By the foot section, the gap between the top two and Fatton grew larger and larger, but in the end the whole top four (this being Harrop, Murada, Fatton and Tatjana Paller) qualified for the final. The second semifinal saw a similar scenario, as Margot Ravinel and Johanna Hiemer were the leading duo come the first transition with Iwona Januszyk in third. The race ended with Ravinel and Hiemer in the lead and through to the final, while Caroline Ulrich overtook Januszyk for third. Célia Perillat-Pessey, not a sprint specialist, finished this semifinal in fifth.
The most important race of the day, which would determine the winner of Courchevel sprint, began with the top three going side by side in the diamond section, but this quickly became top four, with this group consisting of Margot Ravinel, Emily Harrop, Giulia Murada and Marianne Fatton. The French duo got a little bit ahead before the first transition, and Emily Harrop got an amazing transition to go onto the stairs quicker than Margot Ravinel. On them, Harrop was quicker than Ravinel and it would stay like this until the end, as Emily Harrop won the race, with Ravinel in second. A French 1-2 is exactly what the crowd in Courchevel wanted. In third, we had Giulia Murada, for whom it was a second podium this year – a great sign of things to come before her home Olympics.
After a win in Solitude and second place in Courchevel, Margot Ravinel leads the sprint World Cup standings, just 19 points ahead of Giulia Murada in second. The Italian Katia Mascherona, who missed out on the final, still sits in third after a podium in the United States. Emily Harrop, after not competing in the first round of the season, is seventh in the standings, 90 points behind the leader.
Friday – Vertical race
Friday in Courchevel saw the non-televised, non-Olympic vertical race. 86 skiers took on the first vertical event of this season. It took place on the Courchevel course, that had 520 metres of vertical gain. Axelle Gachet-Mollaret, the 2025 World Champion in the vertical race, once again showed her strength in this kind of competition, as she won the race by around 40 seconds ahead of the sprint winner, and a very versatile skier, Emily Harrop. In third, with a gap of 1:27, we had Sarah Dreier of Austria, and then Margot Ravinel and Giulia Murada finished in 4th and 5th respectively.
Results
| Session | 1st | 2nd | 3rd | Full results |
| Sprint | Emily Harrop, 3:07.0 | Margot Ravinel, +7.7s | Giulia Murada, +13.1s | Here |
| Vertical | Axelle Gachet-Mollaret, 23:40.5 | Emily Harrop, +41.2s | Sarah Dreier, +1:27.6s | Here |
What’s next?
After an extremely interesting two days with skimo in Courchevel, the World Cup circus heads to the Iberian Peninsula. On 24–25 January the ski mountaineers will compete in Andorra, respectively in the vertical and sprint races. Then, on 31 January they will cross the border into Catalonia, where Boí Taüll will host a sprint race.
Header photo credit: ISMF
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