Olympic Winter Games Milano Cortina 2026 Preview: Biathlon, Nordic Combined and Ski Jumping

At the Olympic Winter Games Milano Cortina 2026, the biathlon will take place in Anterselva/Antholz, an international biathlon center in the Autonomous Province of Bolzano. The center frequently hosts biathlon world cups and is located about an hour north of Cortina d’Ampezzo.

The Nordic Combined events will take place at two venues in the Val di Fiemme region of Italy: the Predazzo Ski Jumping Stadium and the Tesero Cross-Country Skiing Stadium. Ski jumping will be held at the Predazzo Ski Jumping Stadium. Val di Fiemme is about a two-hour drive southwest of Cortina d’Ampezzo.

Biathlon combines cross-country skiing and rifle shooting and is a direct descent of winter military patrols. The sport was contested at the first Olympic Winter Games in 1924 but as a team sport. Each team consisted of four men: an officer (captain), a non-commissioned officer, and two soldiers. They covered 25 kilometers and shot at balloons at a distance of 150 meters. Military patrol was held again at the 1928, 1936, and 1948 Winter Games but as a demonstration sport.

At the 1960 Winter Games, the men’s even made its Olympic debut. The women’s biathlon was added in 1992. Today, biathlon consists of five races per gender: the individual, sprint, pursuit, mass start, and relay. Additionally, since 2014, the mixed relay has been part of the Olympic program. In this event, two men and two women from each country compete in a relay format, each skiing six kilometers and stopping at the shooting range twice (standing and prone). Each competitor is given three extra bullets for missed shots.

In the individual event, women ski 15 km and men 20 km (all biathlon events use the freestyle or skating ski technique). Athletes stop four times at the shooting range (two standing, two prone) and attempt to hit five targets. For each missed target, the athlete incurs a one-minute time penalty.

The sprint (7.5 km form women, 10 km for men) features two stops in the shooting range (one standing, one prone). Athletes get one shot for each of the five targets. They must ski a lap in the 150-meter-long penalty loop for each missed target. In the pursuit, athletes start the race based on their finishing time behind the winner of the sprint competition. Competitors stop four times in the shooting range and head to the penalty lap for each missed target.

The mass start features 30 athletes per gender. Women ski 12.5 km and men 15 km. They stop four times to shoot at five targets and ski the penalty loop for each missed shot.

The relay is a four-person race. The men each ski 7.5 km for a total of 30km; the women each ski 6 km for a total of 24 km. Like the mixed relay, each biathlete goes to the shooting range twice (standing and prone) and is given three extra bullets for missed shots.

The biathlon is the only winter sport in which Team USA has never won an Olympic medal. Deedra Irwin’s seventh place finish in the women’s individual race at the 2022 Beijing Winter Games is the best Olympic finish in an individual event for a U.S. biathlete.

The U.S. has fared well in the relay, with a sixth-place finish for the men at the 1976 and 2018 Olympic Winter Games. The women finished seventh in the relay at the 2014 Winter Games, and the U.S. finished seventh in the mixed relay at the 2022 Beijing Winter Games.

The U.S. Biathlon Team heads to Milano Cortina 2026 with a mix of veterans and bright young stars. Perhaps the brightest of those stars is 23-year-old Campbell Wright, a dual U.S./New Zealand citizen who began biathlon at age 16. Competing for New Zealand, he won the junior world title in the sprint. The following season, he switched his sport nationality to the USA. Already an Olympian (2022), Wright won two medals at 2025 world championships: silver in the sprint and pursuit, only missing one target in the pursuit.

Maxime Germain, 24, is also climbing the biathlon ranks, scoring personal bests in the top 11 this season. Veterans include Irwin, 2022 Olympian Paul Schommer, three-time Olympian Sean Doherty, and 2016 Youth Olympian Chloe Levins, a champion golfer who equates putting with shooting in biathlon.

The U.S. has done well in the mixed team competition at world cup and world championship events. In November 2025, the team of Germain, Wright, Levins, and Irwin finished sixth, the best-ever finish for Team USA in the mixed relay.  

Olympic biathlon competition begins on February 8. Medals will be awarded on:

February 8 (Mixed Relay)

February 10 (Men’s Individual)

February 11 (Women’s Individual)

February 13 (Men’s Sprint)

February 14 (Women’s Sprint)

February 15 (Men’s and Women’s Pursuit)

February 17 (Men’s Relay)

February 18 (Women’s Relay)

February 20 (Men’s Mass Start)

February 21 (Women’s Mass Start)

Nordic Combined blends cross-country skiing and ski jumping and is one of the original Olympic winter sports. Skiers start the competition with a ski jump — on either the smaller Normal Hill or the Large Hill. After the ski jump concludes, competitors move to the cross-country venue for the 10 km freestyle or skate race. The ski jump winner starts first, with the remaining starting order determined by results in the ski jump, where points for jump distance and style are converted to time penalties. The first athlete to cross the finish line in the cross-country race is the winner.

Nordic Combined also includes a team event that has changed over the years. It is now a two-man race, using the Large Hill ski jump. Nordic Combined remains the only winter Olympic sport without a women’s competition, and its future as an Olympic sport hangs in the balance. The International Olympic Committee will decide whether or not to keep Nordic Combined on the Olympic program after evaluating the sport’s participation and audience at the Milano Cortina Games.

Team USA athletes will be looking to win their first Olympic medals since the 2010 Winter Games in Vancouver.

In 2010, Billy Demong, Johnny Spillane, Todd Lodwick and Brett Camerota won Team USA’s first — and to date, only — Olympic medals in Nordic Combined. Demong won gold in the Large Hill competition, with Spillane taking silver. Spillane also took silver in the Normal Hill, and the four men claimed silver in what was then a 4x5km relay.

Two-time Olympian Ben Loomis scored Team USA’s best results in Nordic Combined in a decade at the 2022 Beijing Olympic Games, with a 15th place finish in Normal Hill. The 27-year-old was also the 2018 junior world bronze medalist.

Niklas Malacinski, 22, is a rising star for Team USA in Nordic Combined. His sister Annika also competes in the sport and hopes to make her Olympic debut at the 2030 Winter Games.

Nordic Combined begins on February 11. Medals will be awarded on:

February 11 (Normal Hill)

February 17 (Large Hill)

February 19 (Team Sprint)

Ski jumping is the original extreme winter sport, with skiers flying off ever-bigger ski jumps starting in the 19th century. The Large Hill competition was included in the inaugural Olympic Winter Games in 1924, with the Norwegians almost sweeping the podium.


The men's Normal Hill ski jump — smaller than the large hill — was introduced at the Innsbruck Winter Games in 1964, followed by the men's team event at Calgary 1988. Women made their Olympic debut in 2014. The mixed team event — with two men and two women — was added in 2022 at Beijing. Ski jumping results are determined by points awarded for jump length and style, determined by judges. An individual women's Large Hill event and men’s super team event will debut at Milano Cortina 2026.

The super team competition replaces the original four-person team ski jumping event. In super team, two men from each nation compete together in three rounds, allowing nations with fewer Olympic qualifiers to compete. Scores carry over from one round to the next.

The men are divided into two groups, with one ski jumper from each country in both groups. After round one, the top 12 teams based on the two ski jumpers’ combined scores move on to round two. Scores are again tabulated from round two, combined with round one, to determine the top eight teams. These eight nations move on to the final round where medals are decided. The team with the most total points from both skiers in the three rounds wins.

Ski jumping was originally dominated by the Scandinavians. But in the past 50 years, the Austrians, Germans, Polish, and Japanese have vied for the medals. The U.S. is credited with getting women’s ski jumping off the ground in the early 2000s. But by the time women made their ski jumping Olympic debut, the U.S. program was experiencing a down swing. Ski jumping pioneers Jessica Jerome, and world champions Lindsay Van (2009) and Sarah Hendrickson (2013) finished 10th, 15th, and 21st respectively, in the sport’s Olympic debut.

At the 1924 Olympic Winter Games, it looked like Norway had swept the podium in the one and only ski jumping event, the Large Hill. Fifty years later, a scoring error was discovered and Norwegian American Anders Haugen was determined the rightful winner of the bronze medal, bumping Norway’s Thorleif Haug to fourth place. On September 12, 1974, Haug’s youngest daughter presented the bronze medal to Haugen, who was then 85 years old. At the 1984 Sarajevo Games, Jeff Hastings came close to winning an Olympic medal, finishing fourth in the Large Hill.

The U.S. and Norway have joined forces with a training partnership that has helped boost the Americans. Team USA’s Tate Frantz had a breakout 2024-25 season, with a silver medal at the junior world championships, several top-10 world cup finishes, and a top-25 world ranking. Inspired by performances like this, two-time Olympian Kevin Bickner came out of retirement to try for his third Olympic team. Since his return, he has scored some of his best results, moving into the top 30 world rankings last season. Also on the men’s side, Jason Colby has been scoring world cup personal bests this season.

For the women, Annika Belshaw scored 14 top-30 finishes last season and ended the season ranked 29th. She and Paige Jones lead the U.S. women. The foursome of Frantz, Bickner, Belshaw, and Jones finished sixth in the mixed team event at the 2025 world championships.

Ski jumping competition begins on February 7. Medals will be awarded on:

February 7 (Women’s Normal Hill)

February 9 (Men’s Normal Hill)

February 10 (Mixed Team)

February 14 (Men’s Large Hill)

February 15 (Women’s Large Hill)

February 16 (Men’s Super Team)