The Skiing Unlocked Guide to the Winter Olympics
- Henry
- 10 hours ago
- 6 min read
The 2026 Winter Olympics are here! Scattered across the Italian Alps some 3,000 athletes from 90 countries are sliding, slipping and skating for 116 medals.
This is your guide to the key skiing and snowboarding events, explaining what makes them so exciting and where Team GB’s best medal hopes lie – and trust me, there is some incredible British talent on display.
So, racers at the ready? Start …
Baffled by anything you’ve seen or heard on TV this winter Olympics? Check out Skiing Unlocked’s Skiing Dictionary for a full breakdown of every piece of slang or jargon!
All times are on a 24hr clock, in GMT
Alpine Skiing & Snowboarding
This is a broad term that encompasses four different disciplines. The men’s events are hosted in Stelvio, with the women’s on the formidable and historied Torfana run in Cortina d’Ampezzo itself. The four disciplines are:
Downhill Skiing
Kicking off first are the downhill events. This event is all about speed – quite simply, who can ski from top to bottom of the mountain in the fastest time, combined across two runs. Courses are long and often with some sharp corners and jumps thrown in, making it the ultimate test of speed, strength, and stamina.
Starting order is drawn randomly for run one, but, after half the field is cut for the second round, racers line up in reverse order, slowest to fastest, for run two. Ones to watch are the USA’s Lindsey Vonn, one of the best ever to do it, who will be competing on a torn ACL following a crash in Crans Montana just last week.
Men’s: Saturday 7th February, 1030GMT
Women’s: Sunday 9th February, 1030GMT
Slalom Skiing
This is the Monaco Grand Prix of ski racing – where legends are forged amidst a tight, twisty, short course that is all about technique and skill, testing the skier’s ability to keeping the skis moving and turning around a series of poles. Miss a pole? Disqualified. Straddle a pole? Disqualified. There is no room for error here. Alongside the main path there are additional poles added in to confuse racers, and sometimes the alternating colour order (between red and blue poles) swaps over as skiers whip through “flushes” of tightly place gates.
Despite inventing this discipline in time for the 1936 Olympics, Britain has struggled with it ever since. That changed on one famous day in 2022 when Dave “The Rocket” Ryding became the first Britian ever to win an Alpine World Cup gold in Kitzbuhel. Dave announced his retirement at the end of this season a few months ago, meaning this will be his last Olympics – Come on, Dave! He will be skiing alongside fellow Brit hopefuls of Laurie Taylor and Billie Major.
Men’s: Monday 16th February, 0900GMT
Women’s: Wednesday 18th February, 0900
Giant Slalom & Super-G Skiing
These two events sit between the extremes of slalom and downhill – Super-G (short for “Super Giant Slalom”) is effectively a downhill run with extra turns enforced on the piste, sort of like when Le Mans added chicanes to the Mulsanne Straight.
At the other end is Giant Slalom (GS), which is Slalom but … you guessed it, made bigger, still competing on a short track.
Men’s Super-G: Wednesday 11th February, 1030GMT
Women’s Super-G: Thursday 12th February, 1030GMT
Men’s GS: Saturday 14th February, 0900GMT
Women’s GS: Sunday 15th February, 0900GMT
Snowboard Parallel Giant Slalom
There’s only one downhill snowboarding event, the Parallel Giant Slalom – this is one of the only snowsports events where racers compete directly with each other, with racers going head-to-head over three heats to determine the winner.
The course is raced between a series of gates that force racers to twist and turn, although it is not as technical as the skiing slalom courses. It is a test of speed, technique and agility, and great excitement as riders throw themselves across the line to win by a nose!
Men’s & Women’s: Sunday 8th Feb, 0830
Freestyle Skiing & Snowboard
There are some really exciting developments in freestyle over the last Olympic cycle, with a series of British women returning from setback or injury to rule the freestyle world …
Slopestyle
Ever been in a terrain park on holiday, and made your way along the boxes, rails, and jumps? This is that, turned up to 11. Skiers and Snowboarders make their way down the slope hitting a series of features as they go, and are graded on the complexity of the tricks they pull off them, and execution of those tricks.
Kirsty Muir (Skiing) and Mia Brookes (Snowboarding) are on course for great, great things. Muir dominated the British Championships at just 14, before falling short at Beijing 2022 because of injury. She is back with a bang, however, picking up gold in this year’s X Games Slopestyle in Aspen, one of the biggest freestyle events of the year.
It is a similar story for Brookes, too young to compete at Beijing four years ago but blasting onto the world stage with gold at the last World Championships, and joining Muir with X Games gold at this year’s X Games. Maisie Hill and Txema Maxet-Brown will also don Team GB colours in Snowboarding Slopestyle in the Men’s and Women’s events, respectively.
Women’s Ski: Saturday 7th Feb, 0930 (Qualifying), Monday 9th Feb, 1130 (Finals)
Women’s Snowboard: Monday 16th Feb, 0930 (Qualifying), Tuesday 17th Feb, 1200 (Finals)
Men’s Ski: Saturday 7th Feb, 1300 (Qualifying), Tuesday 10th Feb, 1130 (Finals)
Men’s Snowboard: Monday 16th Feb, 0930 (Qualifying), Wednesday 18th Feb, 1130 (Finals)
Big Air
One massive jump. One opportunity to pull the most spins, grabs, rolls and switches possible.
Okay, not quite, but Big Air is what it says on the tin. Skiers and riders take on three big kickers (jumps) pulling off the most extravagant tricks they can, marked on technicality and execution. This is not for the faint hearted.
Return both skiing’s Kirsty Muir and snowboarding’s Mia Brookes. Muir won X Games silver in Big Air this year, and Brookes won Big Air gold at the Junior World Championships in 2022. Keep an eye out for Brookes’ custom designed snowboard as it flashed through the Italian sky, too – a meteoric rise to the top for this Cheshire youngster!
Women’s Ski: Saturday 14th Feb, 1830 (Qualifying), Monday 16th Feb, 1830 (Final)
Women’s Snowboard: Sunday 8th Feb, 1830 (Qualifying), Monday 9th February, 1830 (Final)
Men’s Ski: Sunday 15th Feb, 1830 (Qualifying), Tuesday 17th Feb, 1830 (Final)
Men’s Snowboard: Thursday 5th Feb, 1830 (Qualifying), Saturday 7th Feb, 1830 (Final)
Halfpipe
The last major freestyle event is the halfpipe, something that is familiar to many of you. Skiers and riders use the curve of the “pipe” to shoot themselves into the air, pulling tricks and flips – again graded on technical ability and execution.
Halfpipe has been one of the longest standing freestyle events, having migrated over from skateboarding as it became snowboarding in the 1970s and 80s. It remains the prestige event, and one of the most highly sort after freestyle medals.
Enter skier Zoe Atkin, who, in the last 12 months, has a World Cup, World Championship, and X Games gold medal to her name. She will be competing to dethrone China’s Eileen Gu, who took gold on home snow last time out – with those credentials to her name, it is set to be a battle of the titans in Livigno.
Women’s Ski: Thursday 19th Feb, 1830 (Qualifying), Saturday 21st Feb, 1830 (Final)
Women’s Snowboard: Sunday 8th Feb, 1830 (Qualifying), Monday 9th February, 1830 (Final)
Men’s Ski: Wednesday 11th Feb, 0830 (Qualifying), Thursday 12th Feb, 1830 (Final)
Men’s Snowboard: Wednesday 11th Feb, 1830 (Qualifying), Friday 13th Feb, 1830 (Final)
Ski- and Boarder Cross
This is easily my favourite event. Part slalom, part speed, part demolition derby, this event technically sits in freestyle but it anything but. Skiers and riders compete in hearts of four racers to be the fastest from top to bottom.
The course is twitchy and turny; jumps, rollers and banked turns all test a skier’s strength, stamina, speed and skill – then mix in three other riders and carnage can ensue as the fight around and often into each other!
GB’s Charlotte Bankes is a current two-time Snowboard Cross World Champion, and took silver last time out in Engadin, Switzerland. She will be looking to build on this, two previous Olympic appearances (with the French team), and a seriously impressive run of form in the World Cup to take home gold in Livigno.
Men’s Ski: Sunday 21st Feb, 0900
Men’s Snowboard: Thursday 12th Feb, 0900
Women’s Ski: Sunday 20th Feb, 0900
Women’s Snowboard: Friday 13th Feb, 0900
Mixed Team: Sunday 15th Feb, 1245 (Snowboarding only)
Ski Mountaineering
A test event for 2026, Ski Mountaineering - or "skimo" for short - is one of the few events the tests how well skiers go uphill as well as downhill! Racers compete on a mass start over an uphill course that tests their ski touring and boot packing abilities, including forcing them around tight, twisting sections and up steep slopes, before they then ski down to complete the lap.
Disciplines include sprint races over one lap, and a mixed relay over multiple laps of the same course. A bit twee and forced compared to the actual discipline of ski mountaineering, it will be an interesting one to watch moving forward.
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