What Is Skijoring? Where Did It Come From?

You may have seen the Tik Tok videos — cowboys and cowgirls adorned in leather and fur, towing skiers through snow-covered obstacle courses, dodging fire cannons and launching over gap jumps. Humans have been skijoring — getting towed on skis behind animals — for thousands of years.

But there’s a modern Western version: a fast adrenaline sport performed in front of thousands of spectators in small mountain towns across the United States. And it’s growing fast.

Skijoring Started in Europe and Asia

Early records of skiing behind dogs date back to the Yuan and Ming dynasties in China, and behind reindeer to the Altai mountains of Mongolia.

The practice in Europe has its roots in transportation and the military, especially in Norway and Sweden, where it was used to deliver dispatches. It was also a source of friendly competition, debuting at the Nordic Games of Stockholm in 1901.

Skiing behind horses became popular in the Alps as early as 1907, according to skijoring historian Loren Zhimanskova.

“I started to ask the question, how did it come to the U.S.?” Zhimanskova says. “I pretty much determined it was Americans who were going to Europe, experiencing skijoring there, and bringing it back as a recreational activity.”

The Chamonix International Winter Sports Games, later to be called the first Winter Olympic Games, featured equine skijoring in 1924. In 1928 the sport was officially included as an exhibition at the Winter Olympic Games in St. Moritz, Switzerland. Skiers were pulled by riderless horses on a frozen lake, competing simultaneously in a line, at mild speeds, and without obstacles like gates or jumps.

Zhimanskova’s research took her to the White Turf at St. Moritz, a luxurious winter racing event that re-creates this spectacle every year. “They thought the way we’re doing it in the wild west was kinda reckless and crazy,” Zhimanskova says. “But that’s exactly how we thought of those guys without a rider.”

Skijoring Came to America In The Early 20th Century

Zhimanskova has spent 15 years researching the sport’s history in the United States, documenting early mainly recreational exhibitions at places like Steamboat Springs, Colorado (1913), Lake Placid, New York (1915), and at Dartmouth’s Winter Carnival (1919) in Hanover, New Hampshire. Other early locations included Jackson Hole and Pinedale in Wyoming and Aspen, Colorado. But most credit the Steamboat Springs Winter Carnival for the rise of the sport out west.

There’s an origin story that has been passed down through oral history among today’s skijor veterans. As the tale goes, in 1949, Leadville, Colorado, residents Tom Schroeder and “Mugs” Ossman were sitting in the Golden Burro Cafe, brainstorming new activities for their town’s winter carnival, when they decided to travel to the Steamboat Springs event for inspiration.

Neither man had seen anyone skijor before, but they were intrigued as they watched horse and rider duos leisurely pulling skiers down a snow-covered street. This was exactly the kind of activity they wanted to bring home, only “they could not understand why anyone would want to go that slow!”

Back in Leadville, Schroeder and Ossman began to test a faster version of skijoring at the Ossman ranch.

Skijoring Grew Popular In The American West

Jerry Kissell has been skijoring in Leadville for 42 years, since he was 6 years old. “I just remember watching the horses pulling the skiers on these monstrous-looking jumps,” he tells me. “My dad had a Jeep; sometimes I’d be on the sled and sometimes I’d be on skis, behind the Jeep. But I always imagined going behind a horse.”

Kissel learned the ropes from the West’s “godfather of skijoring,” Jody Manly, who helped Ossman and Schroeder develop the sport in the early 1950s. After Manly retired from competition, he shifted focus to building tracks, using his former-competitor’s knowledge to standardize jumps and gates and judge distances between obstacles.

“Jody would come up on weekends, and we would set up the rings, the gates, work on jumps, and do some coaching,” Kissell says.

Jody incorporated rings and gates on the skijor track, changing what started as a simple horse race into something much more tactical. In this version of the sport, teams weren’t just trying to finish the race as quickly as possible: Both the rider and the skier had to collect rings at different locations along the course. Missing a ring added two seconds to your total time.

“Everybody always used to say that whoever showed up with the fastest horse would win,” Kissell says. “But in the ’80s and ’90s in Colorado, these were not horse races as much as everybody would categorize, because of the rings. Missing a couple rings and adding four seconds? That brings the fastest horse right back to the rest of the pack. You had to have a perfect skier. You had to be smooth.”

Paul Copper is another early Leadville skijorer. As a child, Copper grew up skijoring for fun in the Leadville Crystal Carnival in the ’60s. He began competing in the mid-’70s, when Leadville was still the only large-scale competition in the United States.

“When you are skiing on a hill, gravity controls everything,” Copper says. “But when you get behind that horse, you are not the one in control. It’s such an adrenaline rush.”

As Leadville skiers recruited cowboys from neighboring communities, the sport began to spread across the state’s ranches and pastures. Several states over, in the early 1980s, the second “big race” launched, this one in Red Lodge, Montana.

Unlike in Leadville, the Red Lodge race was run on a horseshoe-shaped track instead of a straight or a J-shaped track. This technical layout challenged riders to guide their horses through tight corners while their skiers hit gates and launched off jumps.

Monica Plecker is a competitor and co-organizer at today’s version of the Red Lodge event. “Us and Leadville are considered the early pioneers for the sport,” she says. “Our track is what I like to call the great equalizer. You never know who will come out on top. It takes three heartbeats to pull off a team. You need exceptional horsemanship, technical skiers, and amazing equine athletes to win on such a challenging track.”

Kissell and Copper remember when the sport started to spread. “1988 was the first time we went outside of Colorado to race,” Copper says. “When the spectators started packing the arena, they came in droves, all excited about skijoring. They had beer and BBQ grills in the back of their pickups, [even] Dutch oven cookoffs.”

“This sport really wouldn’t be where it is today if there hadn’t been that group back in the ’80s and ’90s,” Zhimanskova says. “They were dedicated to this. If they hadn't gone to races every weekend, skijoring might not have survived.”

Skiijoring Gets a Circuit

In Leadville, the race had been moved to the back streets, and spectators were less interested. The same few competitors (Jerry Kissell, Kenny Hilton, Paul Copper, Lee Murphy, and Mark and Tommy Hill) were winning nearly every year, and challengers began to drop out.

But by the 1990s, races were growing again across Colorado, and they really started booming after Leadville brought its race back to Main Street. Tony Fox, a skier-to-skijoring convert, was instrumental in helping organize this initiative.

“It opened up a lot of people’s eyes,” Fox says. “It woke people up to a sport that they had never even heard of. Then there was a rebirth of races that had happened in pastures 20 years prior. Vail. Summit County. Kremmling. Minturn. This move to Main Street in Leadville in 1994, it really catalyzed skijoring.”

With more races coming to life, a solid group of regular competitors began traveling the circuit. The North American Skijoring Association (NASJA) formed in 1999 when a handful of competitors and event organizers gathered in Jackson Hole to talk about creating common rules that could lay a foundation for a bigger circuit. Tony Fox soon became the board chair.

“For new races, this would be a roadmap or a guideline,” Fox says. “Also, if you were a competitor and you were going to drive so many miles, you knew what to expect.”

NASJA also incentivised competitors by creating a national championship. Complying races could ideally attract more competitors because those competitors could rack up points for a shot at the national title, determined at a final race held in Red Lodge.

What’s Next for Skijoring?

Skijoring has grown immensely since 2021, going viral on social media and with live-streamed coverage on the Cowboy Channel+. There were 40 races held in 2025, on straight tracks and round tracks, with gap jumps, jumps over pickup trucks, jumps over hot tubs, and the Twisted Switch (a division in which rider and skier switch in the middle of the track), to name a few new innovations adding energy to the sport.

Incredibly fun to participate in and to watch, it’s getting attention from prospective competitors, fans, and sponsors. Events are beginning to gather larger sponsorships, including the Wrangler sponsorship for Big Sky, Montana.

TikTok account Saddles_n_skis, run by rider and videographer Josh King, sees hundreds of thousands of views; its top post (featuring new rider Piper Crabtree, nicknamed Piper Viper by fans for her signature pink Pit Viper sunglasses) reached 4.5 million views.

“Honestly right now it’s just the beginning,” Crabtree says. “There’s so many opportunities with brands that are going to connect with skijoring. Not only do you have the skier fashion and gear, the rider is all about the fun-looking fashion, the fur coats, leather, wool, things like that.”

These viral videos are gathering new competitors and fans, but the new races are also bringing economic opportunity, drawing tourism businesses to small mountain towns that can struggle during the offseason.

The sport’s competitors and organizers are optimistic about the future. There are now nearly 50 races (and counting) planned for the 2026 season, which starts on January 3 in Meeker, Colorado. Some predict an Olympic exhibition at the St. Chamonix Olympics in 2030 or at Salt Lake City in 2034.

Want to watch? Want to compete? Find information about upcoming skijoring events at skijorusa.com.