A little more than a week before the 2026 Winter Olympics were set to begin, Annika and Niklas Malacinski dialed into a Zoom call from their World Cup event in Austria. The sibling tandem from Steamboat Springs, Colorado, are among the best in the US in Nordic combined, which combines perhaps the most disparate sports possible: cross-country skiing and ski jumping.
While its peculiar sport partnering is a worthwhile trivia stumper, Nordic combined is one of the 16 original Winter Olympics events, dating back to the Games’ origins in 1924 in Chamonix, France.
It’s also the only winter sport to never allow women to compete at the Games.
Which means Niklas, ranked 29th in the world,…