One of the Winter Olympics’ oldest sports is facing steady decline. Its savior could be finally allowing women to compete

By Dana ONeil, CNN

(CNN) — A little more than a week before the 2026 Winter Olympics were set to begin, Annika and Niklas Malacinski dialed into a Zoom call from their World Cup event in Austria. The sibling tandem from Steamboat Springs, Colorado, are among the best in the US in Nordic combined, which combines perhaps the most disparate sports possible: cross-country skiing and ski jumping.

While its peculiar sport partnering is a worthwhile trivia stumper, Nordic combined is one of the 16 original Winter Olympics events, dating back to the Games’ origins in 1924 in Chamonix, France.

It’s also the only winter sport to never allow women to compete at the Games.

Which means Niklas, ranked 29th in the world, will be part of Team USA in Milan-Cortina; Annika, ranked 10th, will not.

The continued exclusion of women flies in the face of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) messaging, which has been trumpeting its equality and expansion.

The 2024 Games in Paris were hailed for their gender parity, the first Games with a 50/50 split among men and women competitors. Milan-Cortina is not far off with women making up 47% of the competitors slated to attend. The Games also keep broadening their reach to new or revisited sports – breaking (breakdancing) in Paris; ski mountaineering in Milan; squash, lacrosse, cricket and flag football in Los Angeles.

Yet the mountain remains closed to women in Nordic combined.

“I have been screaming at the top of my lungs about this because someone needs to do it,’’ Annika told CNN Sports. “It’s 2026 and this is just blatant. It’s so unequal. It’s sexist. It’s not right and I tend to be a person who stands up when things aren’t right.’’

Why is this happening?

The twist in this particular battle of the sexes, though, is that the women aren’t threatening the men anymore than the men are keeping the women down. In fact, they need each other.

The IOC’s refusal to add women’s Nordic combined stems, at least in part, because of its concerns about the sport in general. The men’s numbers have been declining – only 36 athletes will compete in these Games, down from 55 in Beijing in 2022 – and it’s long suffered from a lack of parity. Germany, Austria or Finland have won all but two gold medals since 1924.

In fact, the IOC might consider booting the sport altogether in June.

But women could very well be the solution to the entire problem as their numbers are growing in the competitive space. The International Ski and Snowboard Federation (FIS) only started hosting a women’s World Cup in 2020 but more than 200 women are now competing.

The Winter Youth Olympic Games sponsor the sport as well, and unlike the men, there is diversity at the top. Athletes from seven different countries, including Japan, rank among the top 10 in the current women’s World Cup standings compared to just the traditional four for men.

“I get so upset when people comment on my posts saying, ‘Let’s boycott the men,’ because it’s the complete opposite,” Annika said. “We need people to be talking about Nordic combined and to be watching it. That’s what my activism is: It’s shedding light on how cool and badass this sport is. We need to support each other.’’

The Malacinskis did not set out to be poster children for their sport or activists. But because their intertwining sibling stories have taken, to no fault of their own, wildly different trajectories, it makes an easy way to tell a complicated story. Niklas gets to compete in 2026; Annika doesn’t.

The irony is, at one point, Annika wouldn’t have even cared. The children of a Colorado ski instructor (Stephen) and Finnish native (Essi) and raised in Steamboat Springs, the pair naturally grew up on the slopes. But Niklas was the only one who chased Nordic combined initially.

When Johnny Spillane and Todd Lodwick – part of Team USA’s 2010 large hill/4x5km silver medalists – brought their shiny trinkets to their hometown to show off, Niklas decided he wanted one, too. By 13, he was living in Finland with his mother to train, and at 14 showed off his skills to the hometown crowd at the Jumpin’ and Jammin’ Ski Jumping Extravaganza, beating out people more than a decade older.

The sport suited him largely because it didn’t make him pick.

“I loved that I didn’t have to decide,’’ he told CNN Sports. “I love the aspect of flying, the adrenaline and that feeling of just air pressure is indescribable.

“But then on the other side of things, you have to put your all into the cross-country race course. You cross that finish line and the endorphins are pumping. To me, it shows who is truly the master of the Nordic skiing discipline.’’

While Niklas was soaring and grinding, Annika chased an entirely different Olympic dream: a Summer Games berth as a gymnast. Fully committed to the sport through most of her childhood, she only reluctantly gave it up when its demands grew too heavy and injuries forced her to quit.

Just 16 and in need of something to fill her competitive edge, she did what a lot of siblings do: She checked out her brother’s sport.

Annika found out she was hard wired the same way. “Putting the two sports together, it’s just magical, really,’’ she said.

The two naturally pushed one another. Most times, it was friendly; sometimes, not so much – “we can definitely be team entertainment,’’ Annika deadpans – but by 2018, both were earning spots on the US national team. Annika won her first US title in 2023 and Niklas his in 2024.

That success only made realizing his childhood Olympic medal dream all the more tantalizing. He focused on nothing but Nordic combined through 2025, but his single-mindedness had cost him. After soaring as high as 15th in the world rankings, his eagerness to succeed started to work against him. His results faltered and Niklas plummeted down the rankings.

By fall, when he dropped to 38th, he was in a panic. “I dug myself into a pit,’’ he said. “Qualifying for the Games was never the goal; it was to perform well at the Games. And then to see qualifying be at risk, it was terrifying. I honestly thought I had learned so much from my career, so it was a shock.’’

What saved him, ironically, was his sister. Annika had a terrific season, with seven top-10 finishes, competing all the while knowing that no matter what she did, she wouldn’t make the Olympics. Her fight became Niklas’ fight, in part because he wanted his sister to earn her place but also because he recognized both were fighting for the same thing: their sport’s survival.

“I did a lot of soul searching, like, ‘Why do I want to do this?’ and it had always been just to be the best,’’ he said. “But now, I really want to be a face of the sport for the next generation. I want to keep the legacy of Nordic combined going.’’

His focus recalibrated, Niklas rallied with four top-20 finishes through his first World Cup events this year, earning him one of the two Olympic spots for the Americans. Twenty-seven-year-old Ben Loomis, making his third Games, is the other.

The irony is not lost on either of the Malacinskis that were the women allowed, Annika would have no trouble qualifying. She is the second highest-ranked American, behind teammate Alexa Brabec, and has climbed the podium five times in her career.

And yet her only outlet is now bringing attention to her sport. She has built up a good social media following and hopes that will help give her sport the trumpet it needs.

But she worries that the people who really need to be listening might already have tuned her out.

“I don’t even know if the IOC knows my name or what I do,’’ she said. “Sometimes, it feels like you’re doing all of this work for nothing, but at the same time, there’s an entire generation that deserves more, so that they don’t have to question if their dreams matter.’’

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