Wyoming’s Surprise Olympian Started Training As An 8-Year-Old For Uphill Skiing

When Anna Gibson was 8 years old, growing up in Teton Village with the slopes of Jackson Hole Mountain Resort in her backyard, she developed an obsession that her parents found bewildering. She didn’t want to wait for the lifts to start running.

She wanted to climb.

Before dawn and before school, she would beg them to let her strap climbing skins to her skis and make her way up the mountain under her own power, then ski down in the blue light of early morning when the slopes were empty and silent.

There was a problem: It was against the rules.

“Yeah, this is totally against the rules, and I don’t know if I should be admitting to it,” Gibson said with a laugh during a recent interview from her home in Jackson.

Then she reconsidered, saying that, “It did get me to the Olympics, so I feel like it’s OK for me to share.”

The 26-year-old Wyoming native shocked the ski mountaineering world in December by winning her first-ever World Cup race — and securing America’s spot at the 2026 Winter Olympics in the process.

It’s an inspiring rookie-who-came-out-of-nowhere story, but Gibson feels like she’s been preparing for this moment since those early mornings before elementary school.

Ski mountaineering — skimo to those who practice it — is basically what Gibson was doing as a rule-breaking third grader: climbing mountains on skis fitted with fabric “skins” that grip the snow, then ripping them off at the top and skiing down.

Jackson Hole Mountain Resort used to host the Randonnee Rally, the first ski mountaineering race, but Gibson didn’t start focusing on skimo until this year.

The sport demands the cardiovascular engine of a Nordic racer, the technical downhill skills of an alpine skier, and the ability to execute lightning-fast transitions between the two — swapping from climbing mode to ski mode in seconds.

At the Olympics in February, Gibson will compete in two events at the Stelvio Ski Centre in Bormio, Italy.

The individual sprint sends athletes around a circuit course featuring climbing sections — both skinning and boot-packing with skis on a backpack — followed by a downhill through gates like an alpine race.

Each lap takes three to four minutes. Athletes qualify individually, then race head-to-head in heats of six, fighting their way through quarterfinals, semifinals and finals.

The mixed relay pairs one woman and one man from each team. Partners alternate, each completing two laps of about eight minutes apiece, with all 12 teams on the course at once. It’s hard-charging chaos. It’s beautiful, world-class athleticism. And it’s where Gibson made history.

First Timer

On Dec. 6, at Solitude Mountain Resort in Utah, Gibson and her partner Cam Smith needed to beat the Canadian team to claim North America’s only Olympic quota spot.

They did more than that — they won the whole thing, crossing the finish line in 32 minutes, 17.6 seconds, more than 90 seconds ahead of second-place Italy. It was Gibson’s first World Cup race. Ever.

“I think it’s amazing that she reached this level in six months of training,” Smith told Cowboy State Daily. “With a career spent training herself to be one of the best runners in the world and a lifetime of skiing, she’s actually the perfect prototype for this sport.”

Gibson’s resume reads like it was engineered in a laboratory to create the ideal skimo athlete. She began alpine racing at age seven. By 13, she had switched to Nordic skiing, recognizing that she was, as she put it, “more aerobically gifted than strong or fearless.”

She won a national title in the high school Nordic 10K classic and collected Wyoming state championships along the way.

At the University of Washington, she anchored a track and field distance medley relay team to an NCAA record. She became one of America’s elite trail runners, capturing the 2025 USA Track & Field Mountain Running Championship and earning a bronze medal at the World Mountain and Trail Running Championships in Spain.

But through all of it, she kept skiing — backcountry skiing in Grand Teton National Park and around Teton Pass.

“There’s kind of this misconception out there that this is a brand-new sport for me,” Gibson said. “As soon as I could walk, I had skis on my feet. People who know me really well think that it makes a lot of sense.”

Needle, Haystack

Sarah Cookler, the head of sport for USA Ski Mountaineering, knew her team had a problem heading into the Olympic qualification season. The Americans were competitive, but they kept finishing just behind Canada in the World Cup standings.

“We were in the position of knowing that what we had wasn’t going to get us that last little bit,” Cookler said. “Can we find a needle in a haystack? Can we find a female athlete who is faster than what we have right now?”

The needle found them. Smith, Gibson’s fellow trail runner, made the introduction last summer.

On paper, Gibson looked like a slam dunk — elite endurance athlete, alpine racing background, Nordic champion.

“We were like, ‘Wow, this certainly looks like the story is written for us,’” said Cookler.

In September, Gibson joined the team at a training camp on Stelvio Pass in Italy — the same mountain where the Olympics will be held. She had to prove she could handle the technical demands, especially the transitions that separate contenders from also-rans.

Gibson didn’t just handle them. She dominated. “She could really downhill ski quite well on these tiny little skis, kind of better than everybody else that was there,” Cookler said. “Her rate of improvement was exponential.”

At the November selection races in Brighton, Utah — just two weeks before the World Cup — Cookler witnessed something that convinced her Gibson was different. The conditions were terrible, too dangerous for timed downhill runs. But they could time the uphill. Gibson completed her first qualifying lap and looked at her watch. Then she made a prediction.

“She said, ‘OK, I’m going to negative split that by about 10%,’” Cookler recalled. “And I kid you not, that next lap, she was almost to the T 10% faster. She looked at her time again and said, ‘I’m going to negative split that again 10%.’ And again, did that to the T.”

Most athletes go out too hard and slow down. Gibson accelerated. Every lap.

“She knows her body so well,” Cookler said. “She just knows the effort she has to put in. Every lap that she has done, she has gotten exponentially faster each time she steps on the snow. I think we’re going to see even better things from her in February.”

Calm Confidence

Smith, the 30-year-old veteran who has been competing on the World Cup circuit since 2017, marvels at his partner’s composure. During the race that sent them to the Olympics, there was a moment when everything could have unraveled.

Gibson was finishing an all-out effort, they were behind the teams they needed to beat, and the race was only a quarter over. Gibson tagged off to Smith and shouted: “You got this.”

“She was just out there having fun on the course and knew we would pull it off,” Smith said. “That’s such a great example to me that she never lets the pressure get to her. She’s the same upbeat person no matter the situation.”

Smith took the lead on his first lap. By the time Gibson went out for her second, she didn’t need to push — she had breathing room. But she pushed anyway, extending their lead.

“She brings such a calm confidence to our team,” Smith said. “I think a lot of the other athletes, especially the youth, notice how seriously she takes her job as a professional athlete and inspires the rest of them to follow her lead. The fact that she had such smooth transitions in the highest-pressure moment speaks to her mental game and ability to maintain focus.”

Coming Home

Gibson recently moved back to Jackson, settling near the base of Snow King, where she can walk out her door and start uphill training.

“I’ve just been on this process of trying to figure out where I should be,” she said. “And this year specifically, with the addition of skimo to my life, I just feel so magnetized to Jackson. I finally moved back here and have reinvested in this community. It’s the best place for me as an athlete and as a whole person. I just love the culture and the community.”

Now the whole community is rallying around her. The Olympics, Gibson says, feels less like an individual achievement than a collective one — the culmination of every coach, every teammate, every early morning her parents drove her to the mountain, every person who shaped the girl who couldn’t wait for the lifts.

“The Olympics carries so much more weight than any other accomplishment that I’ve ever had,” she said. “And it feels like more of a group, like a community win than one of my own. So the story is all about Wyoming. It’s why I’m doing all of this in the first place.”

February Awaits

Gibson will train in Jackson through the end of January, pushing herself at Snow King in conditions she calls “a pretty good replica” of what she’ll face in Italy. The resort’s firm, steep terrain mimics the Olympic venue at the base of the men’s downhill course. She’ll also hike the boot pack at Glory Bowl and go running out on the elk refuge.

In mid-February, she and Smith will compete in one more World Cup race in Spain to sharpen themselves before the main event.

Then, on Feb. 19, she’ll line up for the individual sprint at the Olympics. Two days later, she and Smith will take on the mixed relay.

Cookler, for one, is psyched: “I think the sky’s the limit now with these guys.”

David Madison can be reached at david@cowboystatedaily.com.