The International Olympic Committee decided Friday not to add a women’s Nordic combined event to the 2026 Winter Games in Milan and Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy, a devastating setback for dozens of women who have dedicated their lives to the event in recent years and a potentially fatal blow to one of the original Winter Olympic competitions.
Nordic combined will continue to be contested by men. This requires both cross-country and ski jumping excellence. Their event is now in danger for the 2030 Games, as the Olympic committee has prioritised sports that can achieve gender equality.
Karl Stoss of Austria, a member of the executive board of the Olympic committee, said the survival of Nordic combined would depend on the sport showing “significant positive development particularly with participation and audience.”
Stoss noted that just 10 countries sent athletes to the world championship competition for women’s Nordic combined in 2021.
“This is not fulfilling universality,” Stoss said. “It’s very interesting for us in the European countries, but outside of Europe you cannot really find athletes doing this sport.”
Kit McConnell, the I.O.C.’s sports director, said the organization decided to allow the men’s competition to go forward in 2026 because it would not be fair to the athletes to eliminate their sport just three and half years before the Games.
Leaders of skiing’s international governing body, F.I.S., have spent the better part of a decade establishing a women’s World Cup circuit for Nordic combined and a world championship.
They had proposed a women’s competition at the Olympics with 30 top athletes. The I.O.C. had already reduced the number of athletes at the Games to 2,900 and wanted to include new sports. Nordic combined proposed reducing the number of men’s Nordic combined competitors by 15, so that there would be only 15. Total athletes for the sport. had limited the number of athletes at the Games to 2,900 and wanted to include new sports, Nordic combined proposed cutting the number of men’s Nordic combined competitors by 15, so the number of total athletes for the sport would increase by only 15.
Annika Malacinski (21), the top American woman in Nordic combined has put full-time college on the slack for three years in order to reach the highest levels of her sport.
“How could they? How dare they?” Malacinski said of the Olympic committee. “The time and effort I have put into building this sport with so many amazing girls around the world and for the I.O.C. to tell us that we are not enough?”
Lasse Ottesen of Norway, a Nordic combined race director, called the decision “a sad day” for the sport.
“The development of the Nordic combined women in recent years has been more than impressive, so that the next logical step would have been their participation,” Ottesen said. “The executive board’s lack of confidence in the further development of our discipline and the visible misjudgment of the achievements of our women is shocking.”
The I.O.C. The I.O.C. tried to soften the blow by noting that other events had been adjusted so that 47 percent will be female athletes in 2026. Among other changes, women’s ski jumping will include a competition on the large hill in addition to the smaller normal hill, and there will be more female bobsledders and also a women’s doubles luge event. Also, each of Nordic combined’s disciplines will continue to exist as individual events.
Some opponents of including Nordic combined in either men or women have questioned its validity.
A century ago, when cross-country skiing and ski jumping were essentially the only kinds of skiing that existed, a combined event crowned the world’s greatest skier. The first Olympics, the 1924 Winter Games, Chamonix, France featured just 16 events in nine different sports. There are now over 100 events in 15 sports. Nordic combined is no longer a title that defines a king and queen of the mountain, with the advents of Alpine skiing and freestyle, not to mention snowboarding.
Organisers have tried to limit the Games’ size while including new sports that appeal to a younger audience. The breakout star of last winter’s Beijing Games was Eileen Gu, the freestyle skier who won gold medals in big air and halfpipe and a silver in slopestyle, events that did not exist a decade ago. Only this year, big air for skiing was added.
Organisers have also questioned whether Nordic combined will ever produce geographic diversity. The countries that excel are those with the most Olympic stalwarts. There is very little opportunity for top competitors from South America and Africa, or Asian countries, except Japan.
Malacinski claimed that the I.O.C. Malacinski said that the I.O.C.
“I hope that they realize that not only have they potentially killed the future of Nordic combined — an original Olympic sport, but also so many young girls’ dreams of becoming Olympians,” she said. “The fight has just begun.”
Source: NY Times
