Historically, Spain has not performed too good at the Winter Olympic Games: Spanish athletes have only won seven medals overall at the Winter Olympics, five of them in the last three editions: two in Pyeongchang 2018, one Beijing 2022... and now two in Milano-Cortina 2026, after a fantastic Thursday with two medals: one bronze, and one gold. It is the second gold medal Spain has ever won at the Winter Olympics, since Francisco Fernández Ochoa in men's slalom in Sapporo 1972.
It was Oriol Cardona Coll, who also writes his name for posterity as he won the first ever gold for men's ski mountaineering sprint, or skimo, a new event introduced this year. This race consists in a trail with obstacles, where athletes run uphill wearing or carrying skis (at several points, they have to take them off and put them back on again), and finally descending through a slope.
Cardona Coll has been World Champion in skimo in 2023 and 2025, European champion in 2022 and 2024, and claims the first Olympic gold medal in this peculiar event. But he was not the only Spaniard who won medal this morning, as Ana Alonso won bronze in women's skimo.
Cardona Coll and Alonso bring the first two Winter Olympic medals for Spain in Milano Cortina, and may bring another one on Saturday, in the mixed relay skimo.