MILAN, Italy (AP) — Annika Malacinski remembers the moment the door to the Milan Cortina Winter Olympics was slammed shut.

On a flight from Munich to Denver, she bought airplane Wi-Fi to join a conference call with the International Olympic Committee, certain that Nordic combined competition would at last be opened up to female athletes.

“Then the decision came: ‘no.’ No explanation, no discussion. Just ‘no,’ and then they moved on to the next topic,” she told The Associated Press from her training base in Norway. “I cried for eight hours straight on that flight. When I arrived in Denver, my eyes were swollen shut. It felt like my world had crashed.”

That was in June, 2022. And despite an ongoing campaign led by Malacinski, an athlete from Colorado now aged 24, her sport remains the last to exclude women – even as Milan Cortina is showcasing the highest level of female participation in Winter Games history at 47%.

Left out at the elite level

Malacinski is a frequent top-10 finisher at elite competitions in the sport that combines ski jumping and cross-country skiing and demands rigorous year-round training.

Her younger brother, Niklas, will compete in the men’s event for the United States and she plans to travel to northern Italy to cheer him on.

“It’s bittersweet. I know how hard he works, and he absolutely deserves it,” Malacinski said. “I do the same sport as him. I jump the same ski jumps and ski the same courses. The only difference is that I’m a woman.”

Female skiers racing in Seefeld, Austria, last weekend protested the exclusion by raising their poles overhead to form an X.

Men have competed in the Nordic combined since the first Winter Games more than a century ago, at Chamonix, France in 1924.

The sport is now at risk of being removed from the program at the next Winter Olympics in 2030. The IOC says Nordic combined has struggled to attract participation from enough countries and draws a limited television audience.

A long climb toward participation and parity

Women were excluded entirely from the first modern Olympics in 1896. When they were allowed to compete in Paris four years later, participation was limited to a handful of sports, including tennis, archery and croquet.

Track and field opened to women only in 1928, at the Amsterdam Games – but restrictions were imposed around beliefs of female fragility. Although the 800 meters was originally included, it was later withdrawn for more than three decades.

The first women’s Olympic marathon did not take place until 1984 in Los Angeles – 88 years after the race inspired by an ancient Greek battle debuted.

Nearly all differences have since been eliminated, though some disparities remain. At the Summer Olympics, women compete in the seven-event heptathlon, while men contest the 10-event decathlon.

Winter Olympics changes at a glacial pace

At the Winter Games, progress arrived even later. Ski jumping was off-limits to women as recently as the 2010 Vancouver Olympics and was introduced four years later at Sochi.

Cross-country skiing’s distance overhaul is the most recent and sweeping change. At Milan Cortina, men and women will race the same distances across all events for the first time in Olympic history.

Previously, the longest women’s race topped out at 30 kilometers, compared with 50 for men. Both will now have 50-kilometer mass start races — like at Nordic Ski World Championships last year.

Malacinski says she will continue her campaign for inclusion, now focused on 2030 Winter Games in the French Alps.

“I’m a very gritty person,” she said. “If I put my mind to something, I know I can do it.”

“That just fuels the fire for me,” she said. “We deserve to be there, and I’ll fight until 2030 because that’s our rightful place.” ___

AP Winter Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/milan-cortina-2026-winter-olympics

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