2030 Winter Olympics adds freeride, synchro skating; drops Nordic combined

The International Olympic Committee Executive Board on Tuesday announced the finalized sport program for the Alpes 2030 Olympic Winter Games, ushering in freeride skiing and snowboarding and synchronized figure skating while removing Nordic combined from the Games for the first time in its 102-year Olympic history.sports.yahoo+2

New Disciplines, Historic Departure

Freeride skiing and snowboarding and Synchro9 — a nine-member synchronized figure skating format — will make their Olympic debuts at the 2030 French Alps Games. Freeride's inclusion comes just months after the first FIS Freeride World Championships were held in Andorra, capping a rapid rise for a discipline that traces its competitive roots to the Xtreme Verbier event in 1996. The Freeride World Tour now counts more than 10,000 licensed riders worldwide and over 300 annual competitions across four continents.fis-ski+1

Synchronized skating, widely seen as a discipline primarily for women, will compete in the Synchro9 format. Meanwhile, snowboard parallel giant slalom, which had faced possible removal, received a reprieve and will remain in the program.smdailyjournal+1

Nordic combined's exclusion ends an unbroken Olympic run dating to the inaugural Winter Games at Chamonix in 1924. The IOC cited the discipline's shortcomings across 14 popularity indicators as the reason for its removal. The decision drew immediate pushback from the International Ski and Snowboard Federation, whose president, Alexander Ospelt, called it "a very hard decision" and pledged to work toward Nordic combined's reinstatement for the 2034 Games.fis-ski

Gender Equality and New Events

The 2030 French Alps Games will be the first gender-equal Winter Olympics, with 50 percent of athlete quota spots allocated to women across 126 total medal events. The IOC Executive Board also confirmed new events including a women's ski jumping super team competition, ski cross mixed team, and snowboard mixed team parallel.olympics+2

Across all FIS disciplines, the athlete quota for 2030 will be 1,264 — four more than at the Milan-Cortina 2026 Games. FIS President Ospelt welcomed snow sports' continued strong representation: "This is precisely FIS' strength: how broad our range of disciplines is".fis-ski