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≡ 2030 WINTER GAMES ≡
The long-awaited decisions on the sports program for the 2030 Winter Games in the French Alps were announced Tuesday by the International Olympic Committee:
● Biathlon: Mixed Singles Team event added
● Figure Skating: Synchro9 event added
● Speed Skating: Men’s and women’s Team Sprint event added
● Ski & Snowboard: Freeride was added as a discipline, with four events
● Ski & Snowboard: Freestyle Ski Cross Mixed Team event added
● Ski & Snowboard: Snowboard Mixed Team Parallel event added
● Ski & Snowboard: Ski Jumping women’s Super Team event added
● Ski & Snowboard: Nordic Combined removed
● Ski Mountaineering: Continued from 2026, with five events.
In addition, the Snowboard Parallel Giant Slalom event was retained for 2030, after also being on the chopping block with Nordic Combined. As far as the Parallel Giant Slalom:
“The IOC EB noted that PGS – as part of the discipline of snowboard – had demonstrated significant improvement since Beijing 2022 across a number of popularity indicators. It was therefore decided to retain the PGS events on the Alpes 2030 programme, provided that they will not have a standalone field of play.”
The removal of Nordic Combined had been discussed by the IOC for several years, which saw too few countries competing in it and a concentration of medals among just a few countries, year after year. The International Ski & Snowboard Federation (FIS) had made a significant push in adding women’s Nordic Combined to its World Cup program, but now it’s out for 2030. This is a discipline that had been in every Winter Games since the beginning, in 1924. The IOC’s comment included:
“Across most of the popularity indicators, Nordic combined ranked lowest among all Olympic Winter Games disciplines at Sochi 2014, PyeongChang 2018, Beijing 2022 and Milano Cortina 2026. At the most recent Olympic Winter Games, it was the lowest-ranked discipline in 11 of the 14 popularity indicators assessed.
“In addition, the discipline continues to face challenges in terms of universality and participation at the Olympic Games. Only five National Olympic Committees (NOCs) won medals in Nordic combined across the last four editions of the Olympic Winter Games.”
During the follow-up news conference, it was explained that the affected International Federations had been kept clearly informed during the evaluation process, but that the actual decisions were not formally revealed until after the Executive Board meeting with all of the federations.
The outcome of these changes allowed the IOC to announce its prized goal of equal numbers of men and women athletes at the Winter Games for the first time:
“Some 3,046 athletes (1,525 female and 1,521 male, including athletes in ski mountaineering proposed by the OCOG as an additional sport) are set to compete across 126 events – 56 for women, 55 for men and 15 mixed.”
Under the new IOC discipline evaluation process, all will be reviewed ahead of Utah 2034, based on a 14-point program, which has been provided to the International Federations, so they know what they have work on.
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