The International Olympic Committee announced on Tuesday that the previously individual discipline would now be contested with a downhiller and a slalomer.
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Sacred in front of his family in Courchevel, in Savoie, Alexis Pinturault will therefore be the last world champion of the historic formula. The oldest Olympic event in alpine skiing, the combined will become a double event uniting a downhill and a slalom ahead of the 2026 Winter Olympics in Milan, announced the International Olympic Committee (IOC) on Tuesday June 20.
While one and the same skier chained the two races in the old formula (the super-G had also replaced the downhill since 2005), “this time it will be a combined team with two specialists, one of the speed events and the other of the technical events”explained to the press Kit McConnell, the sports director of the IOC.
The Olympic body thus endorses the proposal of the International Ski Federation, which “will adopt the same format in its own events (…) in the coming seasons, ahead of the Games”, said the official. Invented in 1932 by the Swiss from Wengen to decide between the aces of speed and the virtuosos of the stakes, the combined had already disappeared from the World Cup calendar since 2020, leaving only the world championships and the Games to do so. measure.
With Frenchman Alexis Pinturault in the men’s category (twice crowned in the event, in 2023 in Courchevel and in 2019 in Are), Italian Federica Brignone will be the last combined world champion, while Austrian Johannes Strolz and the Swiss Michelle Gisin, adorned with gold at the Beijing Games in 2022, will remain the last all-rounders crowned in individual.