Andorra's del Rio to Tour de Ski as U23 leader: 'I feel more confident'
Dec 25, 2025·Cross-Country)
Andorra's U23 leader Gina del Rio has started the 2025/26 Coop FIS Cross-Country World Cup season with some of the best races of her career. The 21-year-old was a photo finish from qualifying from her Sprint Free quarterfinal in Davos, Switzerland, claiming 13th place.
In the Interval Start 10km Free in Davos, she crossed the finish line as the leader and was only beaten by 11 opponents, reaching a career-best result in distance events.
"I already felt good in the Sprint and then the 10km was super good for me. It was impressive because I had never raced in Davos before, and it's a very particular track," she said.
"There is a lot of uphill and a lot of downhill, but you have to work all the time. I didn't know if I would be good or not.
In the two first World Cup stages this winter, her best place had been a 14th place in the Sprint Free in Ruka, Finland. In distance races, she had at best been 27th in Trondheim, Norway.
Having trained a lot on high altitude in her home country, del Rio thinks it could have played a part as a result as she took her results to a new level in Davos, one of the highest located courses on the circuit.
"When I go to Scandinavia, at sea level, I have to adapt my body to the low altitude," she said.
"I don't know if this was the main problem, but when we arrived in Davos I was quite good for my level.
Next up is Tour de Ski; six race days across eight days between 28 December and 4 January, ending with the Final Climb – a 10km Mass Start Free that ends with a gruesome section up an Alpine slope. For Cross-Country fans in Andorra, Tour de Ski is a special event, del Rio said.
"I remember watching it during the holidays with my family when I was younger. I really like the Tour de Ski, especially the Final Climb," she said.
"You can see big changes in the general overall standings – it's my favourite race to watch. Racing, I haven't finished a Tour yet, so I don't know"
An Andorran favourite
The difficulty of the Final Climb makes it a race where names not often in the top-10 to get good results, and Andorran Cross-Country fans know this well. Last year, Ireneu Esteve Altimiras, also from the country of around 88,000 people, finished fifth in the Men's Tour's grand finale.
The 29-year-old has made it into a World Cup race top-10 eight times, five of which have come in Val di Fiemme's last event.
"He always does a super good Final Climb, so in Andorra it is quite a famous race. We knew that he could do a good result, so we always watch this race. "When I was a little kid in the ski club, we were always looking forward to that," del Rio said, adding that she "will try" to become Andorra's next big thing.
"I want to do it good. I will try to do my best there. And I'm also hoping to do a good race in the 5k – the new format. I think it could be a good race for me, but I will try to do my best and play my cards."
New event
To mark the 20th edition of the Tour de Ski, a new race format will be featured in the Stage 3 in Toblach, Italy. Known as the Heat Mass Start, around 20-25 skiers per gender – decided by the general classification and with a maximum of three athletes per team – will compete over a 5km distance in separate heats. As soon as the first heat has finished, the second will start and so on.
The skier with the best cumulative time in all the heats will win. The athletes will be battling to win their own races with speed, tactics and strategy playing their parts as their times will go towards the Overall standings.
"If you get a good group, you can do a better time," del Rio said.
"So, we'll see. I don't know what to expect in that race because I've never seen it before."
The Tour de Ski features three distinct bibs; a golden for the Overall leader, a silver for the Sprint leader and a purple for the Best climber.
Del Rio comes to the first stage of the Tour, in Toblach, wearing the green bib as the leader of the U23 World Cup. She took over the No.1 spot after her success in Davos.
"It's super nice to be in the green bib, but I know that for now it's only a bib. I will try to maintain it until the end of the season," she said.
"It's a good signal, but the goal is to keep it until the end."
Topping the rankings on 195 points – 59 ahead of No.2 Milla Grosberghaugen Andreassen (NOR), del Rio feels more motivation than stress of being the woman to beat.
"I feel a little bit more confidence than pressure," she said.
When it comes to the Overall Tour de Ski, del Rio thinks that Jessie Diggins (USA) could claim her third Women’s victory. Last year, Therese Johaug (NOR), who had come back from retirement, won the competition for the fourth time, with Diggins in third place.
"Jessie Diggins is one of the girls who could win the Tour de Ski and If I have to say one, I would say Jessie because she's super complete. She can do everything and she does everything well, so she could win," del Rio said, saying that "a Swedish girl" could challenge the past two years' Crystal Globe winner.
If the Overall World Cup standings is anything to go by, Diggins is indeed in the top spot, followed by four Swedish skiers; Moa Ilar, Jonna Sundling, Maja Dahlqvist and Ebba Andersson. Sundling will not compete in the Tour, but Frida Karlsson, eighth Overall, could look to repeat her victory in the Tour from three years ago. Norway's rising star, Karoline Simpson-Larsen, who claimed the first World Cup victory of her career in Davos, is sixth in the Overall standings, ahead of her compatriot Heidi Weng, with two Tour de Ski titles to her name.
Norway top the Women's medal table with eight Overall triumphs and Poland are in second place on four – all through Justyna Kowalczyk. Swedish skiers have won the Tour twice in its first 19 years – as many as Finland, through the inaugural champion Virpi Kuitunen, and United States through Diggins. Russia's Natalya Nepryayeva won it once.
For Andorra's del Rio, however, the career is still young and as much as she is chasing good results on Italian snow – in the Tour as well as when she returns to Val di Fiemme in February for her Olympic debut at the Milano Cortina 2026 Olympic Winter Games – she hopes to inspire more people in her home country to pick up Cross-Country skiing.
"It feels amazing to represent Andorra because it's a small country and Cross-Country skiing is not super traditional there. It is more Alpine skiing, even though there is a lot of Cross-Country skiing in my region too," she said.
"Now they can see me and Ireneu in the World Cup, and it's an honour to be there racing. Getting good results, being from Andorra, is not easy. We don't have as many resources as Norway, Sweden or the other big countries.
)
)
)
