By Martyn Herman
BORMIO, Italy, Feb 19 (Reuters) - Oriol Cardona Coll won Spain's first Winter Olympics gold medal for 54 years as he claimed victory in the men's sprint in the inaugural ski mountaineering event on Thursday.
Minutes earlier, Switzerland's Marianne Fatton also made history as she beat big favourite Emily Harrop of France to become the first Olympic champion in the multi-discipline sport that is making its Games debut in Bormio.
After coming through heats and a semi-final in a relentless
snowstorm, Cardona Coll dominated the six-man final, making no mistake through the various transitions on the up and down circuit to beat Russian Nikita Filippov.
France's Thibault Anselmet took the bronze.
Spain's only previous Winter Olympics gold was won by Alpine skier Francisco Fernandez Ochoa at Sapporo in 1972 and it had not won a medal at the Milano-Cortina Games until Thursday.
Filippov was competing as a neutral athlete without a flag or anthem after the International Olympic Committee banned Russian and Belarusian athletes from the Games following Moscow's invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
Harrop, a four-time SkiMo overall champion, was the overwhelming favourite to win gold in Bormio. But she lost time after the stairs section of the course and could do nothing to catch the storming Fatton, taking silver.
Ana Alonso Rodriguez's bronze was Spain's first medal of the Games but compatriot Cardona Coll went two places better with a commanding race to gold.
ABSORBING SHOW
The world's best SkiMo athletes had to wait until near the Games conclusion to take centre stage but produced an absorbing show for fans braving the snowstorm.
With its roots in sedate 19th century ski touring, the Olympic sprint version is a heart-pounding version with heats taking little more than three minutes.
Skiers battle head-to-head, first skiing up a 60m slope with skins giving grip, before tackling a 10m staircase in boots with skis clipped on their backs.
Another short flat skiing section is followed by a slalom ski back down to the bottom of the Stelvio course.
Crucially, time can be lost in the transition stages - taking off and putting on skis and removing skins - and that was where Harrop probably lost gold.
Regarded as the "Queen of Sprint", the former Alpine skier was in charge on the opening climb and bounded up the stairs but then took too much time putting her skis back on and was overtaken by world champion Fatton who never looked back.
Cardona Coll led for virtually the whole race and once he ripped off his ski skins for the final descent he could afford to celebrate before the finish.
(Reporting by Martyn Herman; additional reporting by Marleen Kaesebier; Editing by Andrew Cawthorne)
