Winter Olympics exclusion of women’s Nordic combined event draws rebuke

Feminine athletes competing within the Nordic mixed occasion have deliberate a protest towards their exclusion from the 2026 Winter Olympics in Milan Cortina.

The game, which mixes ski leaping and cross-country snowboarding, could have no girls’s competitors on the Winter Olympics subsequent month. It is going to be one of many few occasions the place no feminine individuals participate.

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Annika Malacinski competes within the girls’s particular person compact NH/5km of the FIS World Cup Nordic Mixed on February 1, 2025 in Seefeld, Austria. (Franz Kirchmayr/SEPA.Media/Getty Photographs)

American athlete Annika Malacinski told Reuters that she and her opponents will maintain an “X” with their poles up earlier than beginning a race in Seefeld, Austria, to represent “no exception.”

“It is so complicated that girls are excluded as a result of we checked off every thing the IOC wished to see, however what in the end hurts is that the IOC does not see the standard of including girls. We will not undergo one other cycle with out full equality on the Olympics,” she advised the newspaper.

The Worldwide Olympic Committee (IOC) advised Reuters it acknowledges the issues the game faces when it comes to recognition for each women and men, together with its total recognition and lack of competitiveness.

“The IOC will proceed to assist the Worldwide Ski Federation (FIS) within the growth and promotion of Nordic Mixed,” the IOC stated. “For that reason, the self-discipline will bear a full analysis after the Milan Cortina 2026 Winter Olympics.

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Youngsters play close to the Olympic rings as snow falls forward of the Milan Cortina 2026 Winter Olympics in Livigno, Italy, January 8, 2026. (Reuters/Yara Nardi)

“However, FIS and the Nordic Mixed group even have a accountability to current a extra convincing argument when it comes to universality, recognition and degree of efficiency, each within the males’s and girls’s classes, in order that the IOC could make choices for the 2030 Video games and past.”

Nordic mixed occasions have been men-only since 1924. Norway took house essentially the most gold with 15.

Malacinski additionally expressed her dissatisfaction with the shortage of illustration on the Video games in a video on TikTok.

“Actually it is heartbreaking, I might cry about all of it day,” she stated in her video. “It appears like we’re being advised that our goals matter much less. It additionally offers me vitality as a result of it reveals how vital it’s that we proceed to talk out.”

Olympic rings are displayed within the snow on the Stelvio Ski Middle throughout the Milan Cortina 2026 Winter Olympics in Bormio, Italy, January 16. (AP Photograph/Luca Bruno, File)

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Athletes should wait till the 2030 Olympics to see if a girls’s Nordic mixed occasion is added to the schedule.

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