Nathalie Armbruster, the German overall World Cup winner in Nordic combined, is angry because she and her colleagues are not allowed to compete at the Olympics – and criticizes fundamental principles.
The fact that the Nordic combined athletes will not be at the Olympic Winter Games in Milan and Cortina d’Ampezzo in February still annoys Nathalie Armbruster.
“It really, really hurts,” said the overall World Cup winner in the Eurosport interview: “When you tell people who are not from sports, you realize again how strange the whole thing is. But above all, you realize that women in the 21st century are still not equal. That’s a huge mess.”
Nathalie Armbruster feels her sport is treated unfairly
At the 2026 Winter Games, the combined athletes, who only held their first World Cup in 2020, will be left out. With a view to the 2030 Olympics in France, it is currently open whether the combination of ski jumping and cross-country skiing will still be part of the competition program. On the one hand, the IOC is demanding gender equality, on the other hand, the Ring organization criticizes the strong performance gap: Only a few nations, especially Germany and Norway, are consistently involved in the world elite. The FIS ski association, on the other hand, argues that the numbers of participating athletes and nations have been increasing for years.
Armbruster rages about Olympic exclusion
She wants to “fight and fight” until the IOC looks, Armbruster said. The field of combined athletes has “increased extremely” in recent years. She hopes to be able to show before the next decision that the women “deserve to be at the Olympics.” A decision for 2030 should be made after the Winter Games in Italy.
Already at the end of October, Armbruster took a clear position on the topic at SPORT1 : She could “not understand the IOC’s line with any fiber of my body,” Armbruster explained at the time and appealed with a view to 2030: “We simply hope that the IOC will look, look at our competitions and realize how much our level has increased – and then make the only right decision.”
On December 5, the women around Armbruster will start the World Cup season in Trondheim, Norway. Personally, the title defender from the Black Forest, who has now finished school with her Abitur, does not want to set herself too big goals. After her successful pre-season and the associated increase in expectations, it would be “cool if I could fight for the top three places in the overall World Cup again.”
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