In The Spotlight Nordic combined: the Winter Olympics sport that bars women Female athletes excluded from participation in demanding double-discipline events at Milano-Cortina

The Week ^ | January 27, 2026 | Chaz Newkey-Burden

[xxqqzz]

The International Olympic Committee has boasted that Milano-Cortina 2026 is “the most gender-balanced Olympic Winter Games in history”. But there’s actually one sport women don’t even get to try.

For all the claims about “the highest level of female participation in Winter Games history”, the door is “slammed shut” for women in Nordic combined, said The Independent. The three Olympic events where athletes compete in both ski jumping and cross-country skiing are strictly men-only, despite there being equivalent women’s World Cup and World Championship events.

‘Misogynistic mindset’ Nordic combined has been part of the Winter Olympics since its beginnings in 1924. It requires precision, courage, strength and endurance to follow the “daredevil thrill” of ski jumping with a “physically exhausting cross-country ski race”, said The Associated Press. It makes for a “two-day event unlike any other”.

Cross-country skiing has centuries-old origins in Scandinavian military training, which could be a partial explanation for the “misogynistic mindset” towards Nordic combined, said ABC News. But it’s the combination with ski jumping that seems to be the decisive factor. While women had to wait until 1952 to compete in single-discipline cross-country events at the Winter Olympics, they were barred from ski jumping until the early 2000s. For decades, they were “deemed too fragile to stand up to the rigours of repeatedly hurtling themselves off the side of a mountain”. And it’s only at these 2026 Games that women ski-jumpers will be allowed to jump off the same large hill as the men.

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TOPICS: Culture/Society
KEYWORDS: olympics

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It is combined cross country skiing and ski jumping. They have womens' versions of all the other events now, including hockey, bodsleigh, and combined cross country skiing and shooting.

[TonyM]

Olympics? When did this start? I guess nobody cares, I know I don’t!

[pissant]

nobody gives a crap