ISMF SkiMo World Cup in Schladming

Lara Hamilton



Daniel Trevena



Kate Zander

Vertical – 14 March 
3 Australian Athletes lined up to yet again take on the best SkiMo athletes in the world at the ISMF Ski Mountaineering World Cup in Schladming, Austria. Our Aussie athletes would seek to tackle a course consisting of 600 vertical meters of climbing over 3.1km. The world’s top athletes managed to complete the course in a mind bending time of under 20 minutes!

If the course wasn’t enough of a challenge, the weather in Austria sure put on a show to make it that extra 10% more challenging. With pouring rain at the start in the Schladming Planai Stadium and dumping snow from the halfway point onwards, lungs and equipment would be put to the test.

Representing Australia in the Men’s event was Daniel Trevena. Dan, coming over fatigue and illness post World Championships only a week early, managed to finish in an impressive 40th position (despite losing a ski mid-way up the climb). 

Next up came the women, ready to battle it out on the same course and rough conditions. In this, Aussie athletes Lara Hamilton and Anna Trnka would take on the brutal course, looking to hold the flag high. Lara had an impressive race, achieving Australia’s best ever result in an ISMF World Cup, placing in 13th position, beating many athletes from the strongest SkiMo nations. Anna also put in a solid race and coming in happy with the result, placing in 27th position. 

Sprint – 15 March
The sprint in Schladming represented the last event the majority of the Australian SkiMo team would be competing together on World Cup. With this, Schladming managed to put on a show with a Sprint race under lights in the Planai Stadium built for Alpine World Cups and World Championships. This meant that the 4 Australian Athletes preparing at the start line would receive spectacular support from the local crowd.

In the women’s event Australia had three athletes on the starting list, Kate Zander, Lara Hamilton and Anna Trnka, all ready to take on the world’s fastest SkiMo athletes over a challenging icy yet slushy at time and steep course. The course for both men and women would tackle would see them rising almost 80 vertical meters and then descending on the World Cup Slalom course over a 500m distance.

With Kate first out of the starting gates, she managed to leverage her years of experience to overcome the course to finish in 53rd position out of 62 starters. Lara, fresh off her impressive 13th place in the Vertical the day before, had delayed fatigue set in. None the less, she gave it her all and even overcoming a slight stumble on the descent finished in an amazing 54th position, only 0.4 of a second of Kate. Anna, also with heavy legs from the day before managed to overcome the stress of breaking her race skis in the warm up to place in 61st.

On the Men’s side, Daniel Trevena sought to overcome lagging fatigue and illness as a result of a punishing travel and race schedule to put his all in. to place 74th out of 76 starters. Dan stated that the motivation to push through adversity in the race has motivated him to continue to improve. Unfortunately, Issac Thompson, who had been battling illness all week did not start.

From here, the majority of the athletes head back to the home locations, whether that be Colorado, Bright, Mount Beauty or Jindabyne. All athletes managed to revel in the atmosphere of arguably the most popular SkiMo sprint on the circuit and take away drive and motivation to show the SkiMo world what Australian athletes can do in the future.