Some Olympic objects are made of gold, silver and bronze. And then there are Ander Mirambell’s shoes — made of ingenuity, necessity and a very Barcelona kind of determination. This week, the Joan Antoni Samaranch Olympic and Sports Museum unveiled a new showcase dedicated to Spain’s first and only skeleton pilot, featuring objects donated by the athlete himself that tell.
The star exhibit? His very first competition shoes. When Mirambell turned up at the skeleton pilot school in Innsbruck, he arrived with a broken sled, a cross-country ski suit and… a cheese grater and sandpaper glued to the soles of his shoes to grip the ice. He had no resources to access professional equipment, but he had something no shop sells: the sheer determination to make it work, whatever it took.
Mirambell made his Olympic debut at the Vancouver 2010 Winter Games becoming the first athlete in history to represent Spain in skeleton. He went on to compete in four Winter Olympics — Vancouver 2010, Sochi 2014, PyeongChang 2018 and Beijing 2022 — where he had the honour of carrying the Spanish flag at the opening ceremony.
The showcase, located in the museum’s entrance hall, brings together the handmade shoes and other objects donated by the athlete, tracing his journey from that first cheese grater all the way to the international circuit. A collection that prompts reflection on the true meaning of Olympism: it is not always the best-resourced who wins, but the most determined. An entrance hall that takes you on a journey through the Winter Games The Ander Mirambell showcase does not stand alone. It forms part of a display that includes pieces from the Milano Cortina 2026 Winter Olympic Games — the 25th Winter Games, held until 22 February across Milan and Cortina d’Ampezzo — for which the museum now holds the official Olympic torch and medals. These pieces join one of the most extraordinary collections in the world: the Olympic Museum’s torches and medals, one of the most complete and historically rich on the planet, and one of the institution’s greatest treasures. Very few museums anywhere in the world can claim to hold so many Olympic torches, spanning so many editions and reaching so far back in history. Each torch is a chapter in the story of human sport; now, the Milano Cortina torch opens a new one alongside a pair of shoes built with a cheese grater. Because at the Olympic Museum, grand history and small history — the history of the quiet heroes — have always shared the same space.
The Ander Mirambell showcase and the Milano Cortina 2026 pieces are on display in the entrance hall of the Joan Antoni Samaranch Olympic and Sports Museum
