Will the Olympics bid farewell to one of its toughest winter sports?

By BRIAN MELLEY

TESERO, Italy (AP) — Nordic goodbye?

It could be the last Olympics for a sport that mixes the grace of ski jumping with the grind of cross-country skiing.

Nordic combined events at the Milan Cortina Games ended Thursday. And the International Olympic Committee is considering scrapping it from future Games because of a small TV audience and podium positions dominated by a tiny group of nations.

As if to illustrate that point, Norway took gold in all three events — including Thursday’s men’s team sprint — and the same countries stood on the podium at all three Nordic combined events at these Winter Games.

“Hopefully these three events have been fun to watch and I think it has been a lot of nations fighting for their medals,” Jen Luraas Oftebro, who won three golds, said after sharing the win with teammate Andreas Skoglund. “Hopefully the IOC will see the value in that.”

Nordic combined was invented some 150 years ago when a Norwegian crown prince seeking glory as a champion paired the two disciplines he excelled at.

The contest opens with a daredevil ski jump to determine the starting order for a lung-busting cross-country ski race.

“Nordic combined is such a beautiful sport and I think it deserves much more popularity because I think the races are really, really fun to watch and the athletes are doing amazing,” said Jan Vytrval, a Czech competitor. “It deserves much more than to be deleted from the Olympics.”

The sport has been included since the first Winter Games in 1924, but it is the only winter sport that doesn’t include women. Female athletes who compete on the World Cup tour and in world championships have lobbied hard to change that.

But their fate is tied to the larger sport.

The IOC has previously put off a decision on the sport’s future but will revisit the question after the Games wrap up Sunday.

“If it stays, it’s for both,” said Lasse Ottesen, the Nordic combined director of the International Ski Federation. “It makes no sense to say, ‘Yes, we’re just going to have the Nordic combined men in or, yes, we’re going to take the men out and we’re going to throw the women in.’ I mean why would anyone do that in these times?”

Ottesen said FIS had exceeded requirements the IOC set out in 2022, increasing the competition in the women’s sport and building media interest globally. While audience numbers grew slightly over each of the last three Olympics, he conceded it was not as much as FIS expected.

Two of the three events — the men’s individual normal hill jump and large hill ski jump competitions that were each followed by 10 kilometer ski races — sold out all 4,500 tickets allocated and 90% of the team event tickets were sold, Ottesen said.

But, he added, the cross-country venue has twice that capacity, so it “looks a little bit thinner.”

FIS President Johan Eliasch attended the Feb. 11 normal hill event with IOC President Kirsty Coventry to try to showcase the excitement that two disciplines generate.

IOC member Ingmar de Vos, a member of the committee reviewing the fate of the sport, attended the large hill event.

The IOC also is reviewing the fate of parallel giant slalom snowboarding to make sure it meets the goal of being balanced, youth-focused and cost-efficient.

If either sport is removed, it would go the way of tug-of-war, polo and croquet — all once featured around the turn of the 20th century.

In the last three Olympics, all Nordic combined contests were won by Norway, Austria, Germany or Japan. At Milan Cortina, Germany and Japan — despite starting two of the races in first place — were shut out as Finland took two individual bronzes and a team silver.

That is progress in the eyes of the sport’s supporters — and the Finns, who gave a thrilling chase for the silver medal Thursday.

“We have done our part with competing,” said Eero Hirvonen, who shared the silver with Ilkka Herola — and each won an individual bronze. “We have had really interesting competitions here and I think all the attention with what our success and medals have got in Finland … I hope it helps.”

AP Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/milan-cortina-2026-winter-olympics

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