TESERO, Italy (AP) — Norway swept the Nordic combined events at the Milan Cortina Winter Games with a victory in the team sprint through heavy snowfall Thursday in what could be the final time the sport is featured in the Olympics.
Finland took silver in a dramatic home straight sprint and Austria captured the bronze on a day when a snowstorm made for tough travel in the two-man 15-kilometer cross-country ski relay.
“It feels incredibly good. I don’t think it has fully sunk in yet,” said Jens Luraas Oftebro of Norway. “It was a very exciting finish. There was no plan to decide the race in the final sprint. I’m not that cold-blooded.”
The event dates to the original Olympics in 1924 and opens with a ski jump that determines the starting order for the cross-country ski race. The rest of the field starts behind the leader according to the ranking from their jump. The first to cross the line is the winner.
The hybrid contest, which is the only winter sport without women, faces elimination from the International Olympic Committee because it draws a small audience and is dominated by Norway, Austria, Germany and Japan. The IOC is due to make its decision later this year.
The podium at all three events that ended in the Tesero Cross-Country Skiing Stadium has featured the same three countries.
Oftebro, who ran away with gold in the normal and large hill individual events, teamed up with Andreas Skoglund to capture a third medal for the country that invented the sport.
"More than anything, it’s great to crown a really strong championship with this result," Oftebro said.
Ilkka Herola and Eero Hirvonen of Finland, who each took a bronze in the first two events, won their first silver medals.
“Of course you always dream about medals, but I'm not sure we fully expected this,” Hirvonen said after just losing the sprint finish. "I’m not complaining.
“It really was extremely difficult to ski out there. You genuinely had to stay very focused,” he said. “Today it almost felt like a competition about who could avoid making mistakes. If you didn’t mess up on the downhill and didn’t make errors on the course, you were pretty much right in the fight.”
Germany had the best score after the ski jump and got a 13-second jump on Norway in the ski race and Japan started 21 seconds back. But the tough race conditions hurt both teams.
Vinzenz Geiger of Germany and Ryota Yamamoto of Japan collided and lost valuable time before the German again lost his footing moments later.
Johannes Lamparter of Austria, who won silver medals in the individual events, shared the bronze with Stefan Rettenegger.
The U.S. team of Niklas Malacinski and Ben Loomis finished seventh.
Copyright 2026 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
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