⛷️ Skimo lands a 2030 Olympic spot

Good morning, Stoke Crew. There have been a lot of wildfires popping up across Colorado recently, and it's been scary and sad to see. Hope everyone out there is safe and staying aware. Alright, here's the outdoor news recap!

In today's report

• 🏃 Two new records at the Western States 100
• ⛷️ Skimo lands a 2030 Olympic spot
• 🏆 Shiffrin gets a 2026 ESPY nomination
• 🚵 Cannondale is folding its factory race team
• 💼 Vail Resorts stock pops on takeover chatter

Today's Stoke Story

🏔️ Two records fall in the Sierra's

🏃 Records fell on both ends of the Western States 100 last weekend, and an unusually cool Sierra day set it all up. Jenn Lichter, a 30-year-old out of Missoula running her first hundred-miler, won the women's race in 15:28:05 and finally cracked Courtney Dauwalter's 2023 course record by 88 seconds, a mark most people had written off as untouchable. France's Vincent Bouillard went even bigger on the men's side, posting 13:46:15 to take 23 minutes off Jim Walmsley's 2019 record.

• The weather did a lot of the heavy lifting. A 51F start and a finish that topped out around 74F made it the third-coolest running on record, roughly 16 degrees under the day's usual high, and cool years at Western States have always been fast years.
• Bouillard isn't even a full-time pro. He still pulls a shoe engineer paycheck at Hoka, and last year this same race chewed him up and spit him out at mile 80.
• He's now the first French runner to take the title, and only the seventh person ever to win both Western States and UTMB.

Why It Matters: Dauwalter's and Walmsley's records had taken on a kind of myth, the times you measured everyone else against. Watching both fall in the same day, with four men under the old men's mark, says the ceiling everyone thought was the ceiling was never really there. The sport just keeps getting deeper and faster!

Skiing

🥇 Skimo is in the 2030 Olympics!

⛷️ Ski mountaineering just locked in a bigger Olympic future. The IOC officially added skimo to the 2030 Winter Games in the French Alps, and this time the sport gets five medal events instead of the three it ran at its debut. The new lineup adds individual races for men and women alongside the existing sprints and mixed relay.

• The individual race is the headline. It's the longer, more technical format that looks most like real backcountry skiing, climbing and descending the course several times, and it's what fans of the sport actually wanted on the Olympic stage.
• Skimo debuted at Milano Cortina 2026 with 36 athletes across three events, and France led the medal count there with three, including a gold. Hosting on home snow in 2030 should only stoke that.
• For anyone new to it: racers skin uphill, strip skins, sometimes shoulder the skis to climb on foot, then rip back down. It's lung-busting, technical, and very much rooted in the backcountry world.

Why It Matters: The Olympics are how niche mountain sports go mainstream, and a bigger event slate means more federation funding, more development pipelines, and more kids who'll grow up thinking skimo is a thing you can chase. Adding the individual race signals the IOC is taking the sport seriously, not just using it as a novelty!

🏆 Mikaela Shiffrin is up for a 2026 ESPY. The Colorado skier landed a nomination for Best Athlete, Women's Sports, putting her on a shortlist with hockey's Hilary Knight, golfer Nelly Korda, and WNBA force A'ja Wilson. The nod caps a season that was absurd even by Shiffrin standards.

• The résumé behind it: a third Olympic gold, her ninth slalom globe, a sixth overall World Cup title, and career win number 110. Nobody else in alpine racing is in that conversation.
• She's already won this award once, so a second would make her the seventh athlete to take Best Athlete, Women's Sports more than once.
• The ceremony goes down July 15 in New York, airing on ABC. Fan voting is open in the meantime.

Why It Matters: For American skiing, visibility is everything. Most U.S. sports fans tune into alpine racing once every four years for the Olympics. Shiffrin on a national awards stage in July keeps the sport in front of people in the dead of summer, and that kind of attention trickles all the way down to the kids on the local race team.

Mountain Briefing

🏢 Cannondale, Breckenridge, and Vail stock

🚵 Cannondale is shutting down its factory race team after the 2026 World Cup season, ending a program that's run in some form since 1994. Starting in January 2027, the brand pivots to "Cannondale Rogues," a broader crew of racers, creators, and community riders across mountain and gravel. The move comes days after a World Cup win in Lenzerheide and just weeks after news that parent company Pon.Bike will close Cannondale's Netherlands assembly plant by the end of 2027.

❄️ Breckenridge's Fourth of July ski party is off for 2026. After Colorado's least snowy winter on record, the Fourth of July Bowl has melted out roughly a month early, leaving nothing to ski. Organizer Zach Ryan said the terrain couldn't safely handle 500 people, so the Peak 10 Classic got canceled for the first time in its near-decade run. The crew plans to bring it back free in 2027 if the snow cooperates.

💼 Vail Resorts stock popped about 11% to roughly $145, its best day in years, on reports that investors are angling to force a shakeup. Oasis Management, an Asia-based activist with a near-8% stake, is reportedly weighing a proxy fight to reshape the board and explore selling off some of Vail's mountains, and the company has hired takeover-defense bankers. Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince, who's offered $500 million for Park City Mountain Resort, is pushing the same split-up idea. CEO Rob Katz is fighting it, calling Vail's 42-resort network the heart of the Epic Pass.

What else is going on

• US 6 closed through Clear Creek Canyon after heavy rain triggered multiple rockslides including 175-foot debris field west of Tunnel 3, with six inches of rain falling in two hours.
• Yosemite officials warn bears are especially active this summer with three already struck by cars, urging visitors to keep scented items within arm's reach and slow down on park roads.
• Banff Sunshine reopened June 20 for 16 days of summer skiing through July 5 after second-snowiest season on record with 404 inches, only third time in 100-year history.

📚 Trailhead Trivia

Mountain biking has been in the Summer Olympics since 1996. Which single discipline is the one contested there?

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Answer!

Cross-country (XCO, cross-country Olympic)