By BRIAN MELLEY
TESERO, Italy (AP) — Nordic goodbye?
It could possibly be the final Olympics for a sport that mixes the grace of ski leaping with the grind of cross-country snowboarding.
Nordic combined events at the Milan Cortina Games ended Thursday. And the Worldwide Olympic Committee is contemplating scrapping it from future Video games due to a small TV viewers and podium positions dominated by a tiny group of countries.
As if as an instance that time, Norway took gold in all three occasions — together with Thursday’s males’s staff dash — and the identical nations stood on the rostrum in any respect three Nordic mixed occasions at these Winter Video games.
“Hopefully these three occasions have been enjoyable to look at and I believe it has been lots of nations preventing for his or her medals,” Jen Luraas Oftebro, who received three golds, mentioned after sharing the win with teammate Andreas Skoglund. “Hopefully the IOC will see the worth in that.”
Nordic mixed was invented some 150 years in the past when a Norwegian crown prince searching for glory as a champion paired the 2 disciplines he excelled at.
The competition opens with a daredevil ski leap to find out the beginning order for a lung-busting cross-country ski race.
“Nordic mixed is such an attractive sport and I believe it deserves far more reputation as a result of I believe the races are actually, actually enjoyable to look at and the athletes are doing superb,” mentioned Jan Vytrval, a Czech competitor. “It deserves far more than to be deleted from the Olympics.”
The game has been included for the reason that first Winter Video games in 1924, however it’s the solely winter sport that doesn’t embrace girls. Female athletes who compete on the World Cup tour and in world championships have lobbied onerous to vary that.
However their destiny is tied to the bigger sport.
The IOC has beforehand delay a choice on the game’s future however will revisit the question after the Games wrap up Sunday.
“If it stays, it’s for each,” mentioned Lasse Ottesen, the Nordic mixed director of the Worldwide Ski Federation. “It is senseless to say, ‘Sure, we’re simply going to have the Nordic mixed males in or, sure, we’re going to take the lads out and we’re going to throw the ladies in.’ I imply why would anybody try this in these occasions?”
Ottesen mentioned FIS had exceeded necessities the IOC set out in 2022, rising the competitors within the girls’s sport and constructing media curiosity globally. Whereas viewers numbers grew barely over every of the final three Olympics, he conceded it was not as a lot as FIS anticipated.
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Stefan Rettenegger, left, and Johannes Lamparter, of Austria, pose with supporters after profitable the bronze medal within the nordic mixed staff dash on the 2026 Winter Olympics, in Tesero, Italy, Thursday, Feb. 19, 2026. (AP Picture/Matthias Schrader)
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Stefan Rettenegger, left, and Johannes Lamparter, of Austria, pose with supporters after profitable the bronze medal within the nordic mixed staff dash on the 2026 Winter Olympics, in Tesero, Italy, Thursday, Feb. 19, 2026. (AP Picture/Matthias Schrader)
Two of the three occasions — the lads’s particular person regular hill leap and enormous hill ski leap competitions that have been every adopted by 10 kilometer ski races — bought out all 4,500 tickets allotted and 90% of the staff occasion tickets have been bought, Ottesen mentioned.
However, he added, the cross-country venue has twice that capability, so it “seems somewhat bit thinner.”
FIS President Johan Eliasch attended the Feb. 11 regular hill occasion with IOC President Kirsty Coventry to attempt to showcase the joy that two disciplines generate.
IOC member Ingmar de Vos, a member of the committee reviewing the destiny of the game, attended the big hill occasion.
The IOC is also reviewing the destiny of parallel giant slalom snowboarding to verify it meets the aim of being balanced, youth-focused and cost-efficient.
If both sport is eliminated, it might go the best way of tug-of-war, polo and croquet — all as soon as featured across the flip of the twentieth century.
Within the final three Olympics, all Nordic mixed contests have been received by Norway, Austria, Germany or Japan. At Milan Cortina, Germany and Japan — regardless of beginning two of the races in first place — have been shut out as Finland took two particular person bronzes and a staff silver.
That’s progress within the eyes of the game’s supporters — and the Finns, who gave an exciting chase for the silver medal Thursday.
“We have now finished our half with competing,” mentioned Eero Hirvonen, who shared the silver with Ilkka Herola — and every received a person bronze. “We have now had actually attention-grabbing competitions right here and I believe all the eye with what our success and medals have gotten in Finland … I hope it helps.”
AP Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/milan-cortina-2026-winter-olympics
