Page 47 - 2021 AMA Summer

Skimo champions includes ninja mountain runners such as Killian Jornet Burgada and François D’Haene - both record holders of the Ultra-Trail du Mont-Blanc - and who excel across both disciplines. And then there’s me. Middle-aged wannabe endurance athlete...
Skimo is directly descended from Military Patrol which was in the official programme of the 1924 Winter Olympic Games in Chamonix, and later formed part of the International Military Sports Council skiing
championships in 1929 (Conseil Interna- tional du Sport Militaire, or CISM). Biathlon too is descended from Military Patrol. With this heritage you may well wonder why it has taken so long for it to take off both as an Olympic sport and, closer to home, as a discipline within British Army Winter Sports? This aside, com- petitions abound in Europe, North and South America including a World Cham- pionship. However, there are three “Blue Riband” events that any serious Skimo racer will aspire to: the Swiss Patrouille
des Glaciers, the Italian Trofeo Mezzalama (both derived from Military Patrol races and held on alternating years) and the French Pierra Menta which has been held annually in Arêches-Beaufort, Savoie, south-eastern France since 1986. This four-day stage race Skimo competition is the subject of this article.
And so it was that after a couple of successful participations in la Patrouille des Glaciers, Lt Col Tom Blankenstein and I teamed up to enter la Pierra Menta in 2019. Just like that. Well - not quite. A reconnaissance in 2018 convinced us both that we weren’t yet ready and then there was the small issue of securing a place. Put simply, it’s a sell-out. French racers are seeded according to their race results in the previous season and it’s incredibly competitive. However, the race organisers reserve a proportion of places for international competitors and we focused our training to compete in French races where we finished with enough points to gain our entry to the 2019, 34th edition of la Pierra Menta. This wasn’t completely drama-free. Un petit tête-à-tête ensued after one training race in which we missed a time cut-off
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