The International Olympic Committee (IOC) added new freeride skiing and snowboarding and synchronized skating events to the program for the 2030 Olympics on Tuesday July 7, while abandoning the Nordic combined, a historic event of the Winter Games.
In total, the expected edition in the French Alps will achieve “gender parity” for the first time at the Winter Games among athletes, with a total of 3,046 participants expected in 126 events, according to a press release from the Olympic body.
After having validated last week the renewal of ski mountaineering, an “additional sport” which had made its Olympic debut in Milan Cortina, the IOC could still integrate new disciplines, attached to international federations that were already Olympic.
End of Nordic combined
Meeting on Tuesday in Lausanne, its executive commission opted for freeride, lines and figures traced in powder snow on both skis and snowboards, the subject of patient lobbying thirty years after its first competitions. Finally, synchronized figure skating known as “Synchro9”, which organized its first World Championships in 2000, will introduce an Olympic audience to figures performed simultaneously by nine skaters.
Conversely, Nordic combined disappeared although it had been present on the Olympic scene since the first winter edition in 1924 in Chamonix, and remained the only discipline reserved for men.
This combination of cross-country skiing and ski jumping was in the spotlight even before the Milan Cortina Olympics last February, with the IOC pointing to both its limited pool of practitioners, limiting competition, and a lack of public interest. However, the detailed feedback on the Italian edition did not make it possible to redo the discipline: Norway achieved a historic hat-trick, while only four countries had shared the medals of the three previous Olympics.
The IOC did not opt for feminization of the event, despite the requests of many athletes and the support of their teammates, as well as the existence of a Women’s World Cup and World Cups organized every two years since 2021.
