It's a mixture of gloomy prognosis and premature swan song that Eric Frenzel is making. “In two years at the latest, the combination will no longer exist,” says Eric Frenzel, national coach of the Nordic combined athletes, in an interview with “Zeit”. When his athletes start the World Cup season in Ruka, Finland on November 27, 2026, they will also have the feeling that it could soon be over.
The IOC's decision this summer to remove the traditional sport from the program for the first time since the first Winter Olympics in 1924 sent a shock wave among athletes, coaches and officials. You are standing in front of a pile of broken glass. "There is a negative mood among us athletes. There is a feeling of hopelessness," says Vinzenz Geiger, Olympic champion from Pyeongchang 2018 (team) and Beijing 2022 (individual, normal hill) in the double interview.
His coach, the three-time Olympic champion Frenzel, speaks of a “huge disappointment”. He "at first lost his footing, my mood was gloomy. I thought: You're not serious. They've really implemented it." The IOC justified the decision against the combination by saying that the sport was the most unpopular sport at the 2014, 2018, 2022 and 2026 Winter Games. In addition, the IOC took advantage of the criticism that has existed for years that sport concentrates on too few countries. Only five nations had won medals at the last four Winter Games.
But the truth is also: The races in Italy last winter were extremely exciting. In the individual on the normal hill, for example, seven athletes from five nations fought for the medals on the last lap, and in the end Jens Luras Oftebro (Norway) came out on top. There are also similar concentrations of success in other winter sports, such as speed skating with the Dutch or cross-country skiing with the Norwegians. "In my opinion, the IOC simply used an argument that people there found somewhere. We were stuck in a box that we couldn't get out of," criticized Frenzel.
Instead of Nordic combined, the 2030 Winter Games in the French Alps will feature freeriding for the first time, and the program will be expanded to include new forms of competition in individual existing sports. Germany thus loses potential medal chances. This year the Germans came away empty-handed in their former flagship discipline for the first time in 28 years. But the athletes are still among the world's best.
Department:OlympiaOlympic hero Julia Taubitz
The consequences of the Olympic exit are far-reaching for the combined athletes. Discussions with sponsors were negative, and both the research center for the development of sports equipment and the Institute for Applied Training Science will stop working for the combiners at the turn of the year. "Both are currently important supports for us in terms of the further development of material and the exchange of knowledge. We no longer have any claim to this," says Frenzel. There are also further uncertainties: “Support from sports aid will be an issue, as will boarding school funding, and sports facility maintenance too – what will happen to that?”
According to Frenzel, all of this means that the Nordic Combined is threatened with extinction. "This sport will survive for a year after the Olympics are over, maybe two years at most. After that, it's completely over. The sport cannot be financed without national funding," says the 37-year-old. Children would think about whether they even want to become combiners. “Sooner or later the World Cup series will also be discontinued,” says Frenzel. If that happens, the Nordic combined would disappear from the sports map forever.
Luca Wiecek is sports editor for WELT. He watched the normal hill competition live in the stadiums of Predazzo and Tesero in February.
