SOS: Save Our Sport, how you can help nordic combined athletes as IOC vote looms

Nordic Combined's fate is in the hands of the IOC, and in the hands of the fans. Here's a bib signed by the members of the National Team. Photo: TownLift // Michele Roepke

PARK CITY, Utah — Olympians, World Cup athletes, Jr. World Championships athletes, parents, coaches, and administrators gathered on Thursday to discuss a vote by the International Olympic Committee, to be held next month in Europe, that could determine the fate of Nordic Combined.

By clicking on this Save Nordic Combined link, non-athletes and fans can help by signing the Change.org petition started in France. France is hosting the 2030 Winter Olympics and wants to see not only a continuation of the men’s competition but also the inclusion of women’s competition.

The nonprofit Nordic Combined USA has another important petition, Include Women’s Nordic Combined in the Olympic Games, and it is asking people to sign here. It remains the only Winter Olympic Sport to not have equal participation with women.

Billy Demong, Stephen Schumann, and Casey Larson are the Olympians and current coaches among those at the meeting, which followed the U.S. Ski & Snowboard’s annual Spring Conferences in Park City. World Championships athletes Adam Loomis and Michael Ward were there too. World Cup winner Alexa Brabec, her mom, Jill, who’s the President of NC USA, and two Jr. Worlds athletes, Augie Roepke and Luke Miller, met to debrief a successful season and look ahead to the big-picture and little-picture actions on the horizon.

The big picture is the vote being taken by the IOC in Switzerland on June 24-25. Evolving sports and spectatorship are behind the potential for a push-out.

“We’re planning for not only 2030 but even more importantly 2034, which is why Park City and Salt Lake City are so important,” Jill Brabec told TownLift. “At these great May meetings we just went to, our wonderful partners at the USOPC and the U.S. Ski Team talk about a specific number of medals they’d ideally love to get at these next Games, and our sport is explaining to the IOC that that number is less achievable without the athletes from Nordic combined competing as well.”

She continued,”I think it’s a no-brainer to keep this sport around, the U.S. is amazing at growing women sports and the Utah Olympic Park and the Park City Ski & Snowboard have a fantastic set up right here to keep everything going.” 

The little picture is, “The goal for a get-together like this, is the fact that even if we don’t yet know the answer we hope for from the IOC, we are full steam ahead.” Alexa Brabec told TownLift. What she means is that plans are, either way, in full effect for women and men via the International Ski Federation (FIS) to still hold nordic combined world championships, world cups, continental cups and support national championships on an international level.

Jill Brabec’s birthday is one day prior to the big vote, on June 23, and as such she says her fingers are crossed for a great gift for her and more so, for the fabulous fans.