October 02, 2016 – In a very productive and innovative session of the Nordic Combined Committee at FIS autumn meetings, the most important point of the agenda was the development of the ladies’ side of the sport. Race Director Lasse Ottesen presented a strategy document as the groundbreaking step towards an Olympic future for the Nordic Combined ladies.

For the first time, goals for the development of Nordic Combined Ladies were put in a a very ambitious timeline to be confirmed by the FIS Council to give the National Ski Associations the perspective to really kickstart the development of a ladies’ section of the sport.

Short- and long-term goals

Given the approval of the FIS Council at their next meeting, the next steps that will be aimed for are a Ladies’ Continental Cup starting in early 2018 (a first organiser has already applied for an event in Otepää, EST), participation in the Junior World Championships in 2019, participation in the Youth Olympic Games in Lausanne in 2020, a first Ladies’ World Cup season in 2020/21 and finally the inclusion in the 2022 Winter Olympic Games in Beijing.

Next to the these long-term goals, the first short-term measures are already well on the way of being implemented. A FIS Youth Coordinator has been appointed with Uwe Mühln taking over the calendar planning, coordination and on-site support of future Youth Cups. The FIS Youth Cup calendar for boys and girls has grown to four venues per year with an overall ranking in place for the first time in the present season.

In an extensive and fruitful discussion, the members of the Nordic Combined Committee discussed strategies to implement the long-term goals and ambitious timeline in reality. Next concrete steps on the agenda for Ladies’ Nordic Combined will be the draft of Continental Cup rules for Ladies until the Spring Meetings and the Calendar Conference in Portoroz in May. A first-ever Nordic Combined Mixed Event was also thought about for the Youth Cup finals 2017 in Trondheim.

In addition, a newly founded working group on the topic of cost reduction for teams and organisers presented first preliminary results and measure that might be taken in the future to relieve the different stakeholders of Nordic Combined events financially.
Other big news from the meeting concerned the calendar for the upcoming season. A pre-World Championships World Cup event was now confirmed in Lahti for early January, bringing the count of events up to 25 for 2016/17.