Oliver Conway

Once they reach the top of the course, they remove the skins and ski downhill with slightly wobbly legs to the finish line.

The race lasts about three minutes.

Schemo has a long history and its origins can be traced back to army training and an early Olympic event known as military patrol.

Andy Bryce is from the British Mountaineering Council.

It spawns from what we would call military patrol races, which have been around for hundreds of years in the Alps.

And as a sport that's been serious, it's been around since sort of the early 90s.

It goes back to the sort of roots of mountaineering.

So when you see people doing ski mountaineering, it really looks like they're out in the hills and they're using different modes of transport to get across the terrain in front of them.

It's really genuinely very exciting.

There's lots of different bits to it, lots of different skills.

You have to be a really good, competent downhill skier.

You have to be really competent on the mountain terrain.

You have to be incredibly fit to almost, you know, hill runner type fitness to get up the steep.

And then also the transitions are incredibly important as well.

I think what people watching it will find most exciting is when you see people transitioning from uphill to downhill and they're taking the skins on and off their skis.

The speed they have to do that is quite incredible.

Military patrol was actually an event at the very first Winter Olympics in 1924 in the French resort of Chamonix.

It later morphed into the more commonly known biathlon, a combination of cross-country skiing and rifle shooting, which needs muscly legs, a steady hand and a low heart rate.

Thursday's Schemo races will take place in the resort of Bormio in the Dolomites.

Richard Hamilton.