When Lara Hamilton started skiing as a child her parents would not let her join them on the slopes until she could keep up. Off she went to ski school, while her mum and dad traversed the New South Wales ski town of Perisher unshackled by children. Her dad raced World Cup Nordic skiing, so they didn’t dawdle. Now, Hamilton is about to make her Winter Olympics debut, and she is solely focused on keeping pace with the best ski mountaineers in the world.
“It was just in the family and we had a lot of old gear and he taught me and my sister how to Nordic ski,” Hamilton says. “Then I found backcountry skiing when I moved to the US for college in 2019, and then slowly the backcountry skiing turned into ski mountaineering because I saw a way to do what I was doing on a heavy setup, much faster. I invested in the lighter stuff and made friends who taught me what they knew, and off I went.”
Ski mountaineering, or skimo, is making its Olympic debut at Milano Cortina 2026. Skimo involves a combination of ascending a mountain on skins (sticky synthetic strips on the underside of skis that give traction), hiking or “boot-packing” with the skis stowed on your back, and descending on skis. Transitioning quickly between the three elements is the key to success in the sprint formats that will be showcased at the Games.
But Hamilton’s snow-capped upbringing and college influence are only part of her journey to skimo and Milano Cortina. Another significant factor, common across many skimo athletes, is running. “I randomly decided to enter a race when I was 17 and I happened to win,” Hamilton says, “And I was like, ‘OK, maybe I’m actually good at running’.”
She is better than good. Winning that Sydney Harbour 5km race in 2015 was a step towards a US college scholarship for track and cross-country (to complete a master in opera singing, no less), which has been interspersed with success in trail running, including representing Australia at the World Mountain and Trail Running Championships.
“My trail running results are arguably still to this point better than my mountaineering results, although I’m starting to catch up,” she says. “So I know I’m good at the highly aerobic stuff. And I think it’s so cool to try and put Australia on the map in that shorter distance trail running.”
Skiing and trail running converge perfectly at ski mountaineering. Add into the mix that skimo can take you off piste and into the wild without the need for a life pass and Hamilton was quickly hooked.
“There’s a feeling of home just being in the forest or, as we say, the bush,” she says. “When you go out before the lifts open, and you’re watching the sun come up, and you hear the birds, it’s a feeling that you can get at any Alpine area. Everything’s just calm and you’re just immersed in nature. It’s the best way to start the day.”
A specialised skimo coach was not even in the picture until October 2025. Since then, Hamilton’s results have drastically improved and while she is undeniably excited for the Games in Italy, finding out what she could achieve beyond them is an equally strong motivator. But there are two challenges that are constantly causing her progress to falter: the state of her bank balance and the state of her spine.
The first is a perennial problem for Australia’s winter athletes. Hamilton constantly feels like she is “living off the smell of an oily rag”, a fitting idiom which reminds her of home from her French base. Sport costs are covered by donations, minimal government funding, and her income from a minimum-wage part-time job, DJ gigs and Nordic ski coaching.
“The Olympics are funded, and then nothing,” she says. “And there’s still five more races in the season. Right now, I’m actually a little bit stressed because the Olympics are important, but I’m committed to this sport … what about the rest of my season? So there’s a bit of a conflict there.”
The second challenge is uniquely Hamilton’s: an inflammatory condition called ankylosing spondylitis (AS) which affects her sacroiliac joints. It can cause pain and stiffness and the progression of the disease is not linear, which can make training and competition hard.
“I just have a course of treatment that I take a couple of times every month, but the problem is the immunosuppression component and constantly having to time it around competitions,” Hamilton says.
Fortunately, the skimo events at Milano Cortina line up “pretty well” with her treatment schedule – the individual competition runs on Thursday – so she is optimistic that it won’t upend her preparations at the last minute. In the long-term the picture is murkier but Hamilton does not seem like one to linger too long on unknowns.
“Is there a point where I’m going to be stuck to just low impact sports?” she asks. “I don’t know, but I’m just going to keep going as long as I can and try not to predict the future because honestly, none of us know if there’s going to be cure.”
