Olympic Spotlight—Nordic Combined: The Only Olympic Sport Where Women Can’t Compete

American Nordic Combined skier Annika Malacinski, celebrates after competing at the Viessmann FIS Nordic Combined World Cup in Otepää, Estonia in February 2025. (Courtesy @nocogirls)

Despite my earlier promises when debuting this series to focus on Olympic sports, I’ve decided to deviate from that today, and talk about a sport that, by all accounts, deserves to be in the Olympics.

Nordic Combined is an event that combines ski jumping and cross-country skiing: athletes jump from a hill (the size of the hill differs by category and includes two sizes, which are normal and large), and then race cross-country to the finish line. There’s three events to compete in this year: individual normal hill with a 10km race, individual large hill with a 10km race, and a team race with a large hill and two 7.5km races.

No women will compete.

In order for an event to be officially sanctioned at the Olympics it must meet the following criteria: the sport must comply with the Olympic Charter, the World Anti-Doping Code and the Olympic Movement Code on the Prevention of the Manipulation of Competition in order to be eligible for competition.

The International Olympic Committee commented on the lack of a women’s event in the sport by declaring that there isn’t a substantial global appeal, and there is a smaller number of countries interested in fielding an Olympic roster for the event. They further commented that the event has low audience interest. But these claims come amidst an established Women’s World Cup tournament, and World Championships for Nordic Combined that women participate in annually. The event boasts recent success too. On just February 1, Norwegian skier Ida Marie Hagen won the 2026 Women’s Nordic Combined Seefield Triple, securing her second World Cup Overall Title, along with sweeping the category of Best Skier Overall.

True, the bulk of Women’s Nordic Combined tournaments and events occur in Europe, and the United States isn’t as well established as Norway, Germany, and Austria, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t a market for it in the States. Plenty of sports, which aren’t dominated by teams in the U.S. or even Canada, are granted an event, and compete in it. Luge, for instance, is consistently won by teams of athletes from Germany, on both the men’s and women’s side. Despite the U.S. team’s lack of placing in the standings, the IOC continues to fund and support the event.

The lack of “global support” that the IOC claims Women’s Nordic Combined receives is both exaggerated and signals a lack of support for growing the sport.

Imagine if young girls saw women competing in Nordic Combined in the Olympics and got hooked. The IOC could single-handedly promote the participation of more young women and girls in the sport to grow it. The returns would surely be bigger than the investment: cultivate a new generation of female Nordic Combined athletes and continue to televise them in a decade once they start competing on an international stage.

What happens when you do that? You ultimately make more money because people tune in to watch the event, therefore bringing in profits that you otherwise would not have earned. Instead of that, the IOC continues to choose to exclude it, because executives think that women’s sports are less worthy of global viewership.

It also raises the question of whether an event should be included if only one gender is allowed to compete.

Women were only allowed to compete in Ski Jumping as recently as the Sochi Games in 2014. Now, female ski jumpers are allowed to compete on an international stage, most of whom have been training their whole life to do.

Not only do female Nordic Combined athletes deserve this international stage, but many of them have also been advocating for it in their free time. Annika Malacinski will watch her brother, Niklas, don the stars and stripes for the Nordic Combined in just a few weeks.

When ESPN asked her about her view on the debacle, she said, "I think it's insane that we are living in the 20th century, and we are still experiencing inequality not only in our daily lives, but over a sport that we put our souls into. As much as I love Nordic combined, it's absolutely awful having to fight with other girls on my side to get it out to the world how we are the only Olympic sport that doesn't have both men and women in the games for no reason at all.”

The fact of the matter is: as we continue to hurtle towards the Opening Ceremonies, the IOC has revealed their true views on the matter. Their exclusion of women from Nordic Combined not only sends a discouraging message to women but serves as a reminder to female Nordic Combined athletes: at the end of the day, they will have to work twice as hard for half of the recognition that the Olympics affords their male counterparts.